A SHORT LIFE OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 




PRESIDENT LINi 



<D HIS SON "TAD. 



A SHORT LIFE OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



CONDENSED FROM NICOLAY & HAY'S 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A HISTORY 



BY 

JOHN G. NICOLAY 




NEW YORK 

Gbc Centura Co. 

1906 



E4-57 



Copyright, 1902, by 
The Century Co- 

Published October, rgo2 









Printed in the United States by 
The De Vinne Press, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 



i 

PAGB 

Ancestry — Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks — Rock Spring 
Farm — Lincoln's Birth — Kentucky Schools — The Journey to 
Indiana — Pigeon Creek Settlement — Indiana Schools — Sally 
Bush Lincoln — Gcntryville — Work and Books — Satires and 
Sermons — Flatboat Voyage to New Orleans — The Journey to 
Illinois 3 

II 
Flatboat — New Salem — Flection Clerk — Store and Mill — Kirk- 
ham's "Grammar" — "Sangamo Journal" — The Talisman 
— Lincoln's Address, March 9, 1832 — Black Hawk War — 
Lincoln Elected Captain — Mustered out May 27, 1832 — Re- 
enlisted in Independent Spy Battalion — Finally Mustered out, 
June 16, 1832 — Defeated for the Legislature — Blacksmith or 
Lawyer? — The Lincoln-Berry Store — Appointed Postmaster, 
May 7, 1833 — National Politics 21 

III 

Appointed Deputy Surveyor — Elected to Legislature in 1834 — 
Campaign Issues — Begins Study of Law — Internal Improve- 
ment System — The Lincoln-Stone Protest — Candidate for 
Speaker in 1838 and 1840 39 

IV* 

Law Practice — Rules for a Lawyer — Law and Politics: Twin 
Occupations — The Springfield Coterie — Friendly Help — 
Anne Rutledge — Mary Owens 49 



CONTENTS 



Springfield Society — Miss Mary Todd — Lincoln's Engagement 

— His Deep Despondency — Visit to Kentucky — Letters to 
Speed — The Shields Duel — Marriage — Law Partnership with 
Logan — Hardin Nominated for Congress, 1843 — Baker Nomi- 
nated for Congress, 1844 — Lincoln Nominated and Elected, 
1846 61 

VI 

First Session of the Thirtieth Congress — Mexican War — "Wil- 
mot Proviso" — Campaign of 1848 — Letters to Herndon about 
Young Men in Politics — Speech in Congress on the Mexican 
War — Second Session of the Thirtieth Congress — Bill to Pro- 
hibit Slavery in the District of Columbia — Lincoln's Recom- 
mendations of Office-Seekers — Letters to Speed — Commis- 
sioner of the General Land Office — Declines Governorship of 
Oregon 76 

VII 

Repeal of the Missouri Compromise — State Fair Debate — Peoria 
Debate — Trumbull Elected — Letter to Robinson — The 
Know-Nothings — Decatur Meeting — Bloomington Conven- 
tion — Philadelphia Convention — Lincoln's Vote for Vice- 
President — Fremont and Dayton — Lincoln's Campaign 
Speeches — Chicago Banquet Speech 94 

VIII 

Buchanan Elected President — The Dred Scott Decision — 
Douglas's Springfield Speech, 1857 — Lincoln's Answering 
Speech — Criticism of Dred Scott Decision — Kansas Civil War 

— Buchanan Appoints Walker — Walker's Letter on Kansas — 
The Lecompton Constitution — Revolt of Douglas . . . .108 

IX 

The Senatorial Contest in Illinois — "House Divided against 
Itself" Speech — The Lincoln-Douglas Debates — The Free- 
port Doctrine — Douglas Deposed from Chairmanship of Com- 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

mittee on Territories — Benjamin on Douglas — Lincoln's 
Popular Majority — Douglas Gains Legislature — Greeley, Crit- 
tenden, et al. — "The Fight Must Go On" — Douglas's South- 
ern Speeches — Senator Brown's Questions — Lincoln's Warn- 
ing against Popular Sovereignty — The War of Pamphlets — 
Lincoln's Ohio Speeches — The John Brown Raid — Lincoln's 
Comment 11S 



Lincoln's Kansas Speeches — The Cooper Institute Speech — 
New England Speeches — The Democratic Schism — Senator 
Brown's Resolutions — Jefferson Davis's Resolutions — The 
Charleston Convention — Majority and Minority Reports — 
Cotton State Delegations Secede — Charleston Convention 
Adjourns — Democratic Baltimore Convention Splits — Breck- 
inridge Nominated — Douglas Nominated — Bell Nominated 
by Union Constitutional Convention — Chicago Convention — 
Lincoln's Letters to Pickett and Judd — The Pivotal States — 
Lincoln Nominated 136 

XI 

Candidates and Platforms — The Political Chances — Decatur 
Lincoln Resolution — John Hanks and the Lincoln Rails — 
The Rail-Splitter Candidate — The Wide- Awakes — Douglas's 
Southern Tour — Jefferson Davis's Address — Fusion — Lin- 
coln at the State House — The Election Result 152 

XII 

Lincoln's Cabinet Program — Members from the South — Ques- 
tions and Answers — Correspondence with Stephens — Action 
of Congress — Peace Convention — Preparation of the In- 
augural — Lincoln's Farewell Address — The Journey to Wash- 
ington — Lincoln's Midnight Journey 161 

XIII 

The Secession Movement — South Carolina Secession — Buchan- 
an's Neglect — Disloyal Cabinet Members — Washington Cen- 



x CONTENTS 

PAGE 

tral Cabal — Anderson's Transfer to Sumter — Star of the 
West — Montgomery Rebellion — Davis and Stephens — Cor- 
ner-stone Theory — Lincoln Inaugurated — His Inaugural Ad- 
dress — Lincoln's Cabinet — The Question of Sumter — Sew- 
ard's Memorandum — Lincoln's Answer — Bombardment of 
Sumter — Anderson's Capitulation 175 

XIV 

President's Proclamation Calling for Seventy-five Regiments — 
Responses of the Governors — Maryland and Virginia — The 
Baltimore Riot — Washington Isolated — Lincoln Takes the 
Responsibility — Robert E. Lee — Arrival of the New York 
Seventh — Suspension of Habeas Corpus — The Annapolis 
Route — Butler in Baltimore — Taney on the Merryman Case — 
Kentucky — Missouri — Lyon Captures Camp Jackson — Boon- 
ville Skirmish — The Missouri Convention — Gamble made 
Governor — The Border States 191 



XV 

Davis's Proclamation for Privateers — Lincoln's Proclamation of 
Blockade — The Call for Three Years' Volunteers — Southern 
Military Preparations — Rebel Capital Moved to Richmond — 
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas Admitted 
to Confederate States — Desertion of Army and Navy Officers 
— Union Troops Fortify Virginia Shore of the Potomac — Con- 
centration at Harper's Ferry — Concentration at Fortress Mon- 
roe and Cairo — English Neutrality — Seward's 2lst-of-May 
Despatch — Lincoln's Corrections — Preliminary Skirmishes — 
Forward to Richmond — Plan of McDowell's Campaign . . . 205 



XVI 

Congress — The President's Message — Men and Money Voted 
— The Contraband — Dennison Appoints McClellan — Rich 
Mountain — McDowell — Bull Run — Patterson's Failure — 
McClellan at Washington 217 



CONTENTS 



XVII 

General Scott's Plans — Criticized as the "Anaconda" — The 
Three Fields of Conflict — Fremont Appointed Major-General 
— His Military Failures — Battle of Wilson's Creek — Hunter 
Ordered to Fremont — Fremont's Proclamation — President 
Revokes Fremont's Proclamation — Lincoln's Letter to Brown- 
ing — Surrender of Lexington — Fremont Takes the Field — 
Cameron's Visit to Fremont — Fremont's Removal .... 231 

XVIII 

Blockade — Hatteras Inlet — Port Royal Captured — The Trent 
Affair — Lincoln Suggests Arbitration — Seward's Despatch — 
McClellan at Washington — Army of the Potomac — McClel- 
lan's Quarrel with Scott — Retirement of Scott — Lincoln's 
Memorandum — "All Quiet on the Potomac" — Conditions 
in Kentucky — Cameron's Visit to Sherman — East Ten- 
nessee — Instructions to Buell — Buell's Neglect — Halleck in 
Missouri 244 

XIX 

Lincoln Directs Cooperation — Halleck and Buell — Ulysses S. 
Grant — Grant's Demonstration — Victory at Mill River — 
Fort Henry — Fort Donelson — Buell's Tardiness — Halleck's 
Activity — Victory of Pea Ridge — Halleck Receives General 
Command — Pittsburg Landing — Island No. 10 — Halleck's 
Corinth Campaign — Halleck's Mistakes 262 



XX 

The Blockade — Hatteras Inlet — Roanoke Island — Fort Pulaski 
— Merrimac and Monitor — The Cumberland Sunk — The Con- 
gress Burned — Battle of the Ironclads — Flag-Officer Farragut 
— Forts Jackson and St. Philip — New Orleans Captured — 
Farragut at Vicksburg — Farragut's Second Expedition to 
Vicksburg — Return to New Orleans 277 



CONTENTS 



XXI 



McClellan's Illness — Lincoln Consults McDowell and Franklin — 
President's Plan against Manassas — McClellan's Plan against 
Richmond — Cameron and Stanton — President's War Order 
No. i — Lincoln's Questions to McClellan — News from the 
West — Death of Willie Lincoln — The Harper's Ferry Fiasco 

— President's War Order No. 3 — The News from Hampton 
Roads — Manassas Evacuated — Movement to the Peninsula — 
Yorktown — The Peninsula Campaign — Seven Days' Battles 

— Retreat to Harrison's Landing 288 

XXII 

Jackson's Valley Campaign — Lincoln's Visit to Scott — Pope 
Assigned to Command — Lee's Attack on McClellan — Retreat 
to Harrison's Landing— Seward Sent to New York — Lincoln's 
Letter to Seward — Lincoln's Letter to McClellan — Lincoln's 
Visit to McClellan— Halleck Made General-in-Chief — Hal- 
leck's Visit to McClellan — Withdrawal from Harrison's Land- 
ing — Pope Assumes Command — Second Battle of Bull Run 

— The Cabinet Protest— McClellan Ordered to Defend Wash- 
ington — The Maryland Campaign — Battle of Antietam — 
Lincoln visits Antietam — Lincoln's Letter to McClellan — 
McClellan Removed from Command 305 

XXIII 

Cameron's Report — Lincoln's Letter to Bancroft — Annual Mes- 
sage on Slavery — The Delaware Experiment — Joint Resolu- 
tion on Compensated Abolishment — First Border State Inter- 
view — Stevens's Comment — District of Columbia Abolish- 
ment — Committee on Abolishment— Hunter's Order Revoked 

— Antislavery Measures of Congress — Second Border State 
Interview — Emancipation Proposed and Postponed .... 320 

XXIV 

Criticism of the President for his Action on Slavery — Lincoln's 
Letters to Louisiana Friends — Greeley's Open Letter — Mr. 



CONTENTS xiii 

*Ar,s 

Lincoln's Reply — Chicago Clergymen Urge Emancipation — 
Lincoln's Answer — Lincoln Issues Preliminary Proclamation — 
President Proposes Constitutional Amendment — Cabinet Con- 
siders Final Proclamation — Cabinet Discusses Admission of 
West Virginia — Lincoln Signs Edict of Freedom — Lincoln's 
Letter to Hodges 333 

XXV 

Negro Soldiers — Fort Pillow — Retaliation — Draft — Northern 
Democrats — Governor Seymour's Attitude — Draft Riots in 
New York — Vallandigham — Lincoln on his Authority to 
Suspend Writ of Habeas Corpus — Knights of the Golden Cir- 
cle — Jacob Thompson in Canada 348 

XXVI 

Burnside — Fredericksburg — A Tangle of Cross-Purposes — 
Hooker Succeeds Burnside — Lincoln to Hooker — Chancel- 
lorsville — Lee's Second Invasion — Lincoln's Criticisms of 
Hooker's Plans — Hooker Relieved — Meade — Gettysburg — 
Lee's Retreat — Lincoln's Letter to Meade — Lincoln's Gettys- 
burg Address — Autumn Strategy — The Armies go into Win- 
ter Ousters 363 

XXVII 

Buell and Bragg — Perryville — Rosecrans and Murfreesboro — 
Grant's Vicksburg Experiments — Grant's May Battles — Siege 
and Surrender of Vicksburg — Lincoln to Grant — Rosecrans's 
March to Chattanooga — Battle of Chickamauga — Grant at 
Chattanooga— Battle of Chattanooga — Burnside at Knoxville 
— Burnside Repulses Longstreet 379 

XXVIII 

Grant Lieutenant-General — Interview with Lincoln — Grant 
Visits Sherman — Plan of Campaigns — Lincoln to Grant — 
From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor — The Move to City 
Point — Siege of Petersburg — Early Menaces Washington- 
Lincoln under Fire — Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley . . 393 



CONTENTS 



XXIX 

PAGE 

Sherman's Meridian Expedition — Capture of Atlanta — Hood 
Supersedes Johnston — Hood's Invasion of Tennessee —Frank- 
lin and Nashville — Sherman's March to the Sea — Capture of 
Savannah — Sherman to Lincoln — Lincoln to Sherman — 
Sherman's March through the Carolinas — The Burning of 
Charleston and Columbia — Arrival at Goldsboro — Junction 
with Schofield — Visit to Grant 405 

XXX 

Military Governors — Lincoln's Theory of Reconstruction — Con- 
gressional Election in Louisiana — Letter to Military Gover- 
nors — Letter to Shepley — Amnesty Proclamation, December 
8, 1863 — Instructions to Banks — Banks's Action in Louisiana 

— Louisiana Abolishes Slavery — Arkansas Abolishes Slavery 

— Reconstruction in Tennessee — Missouri Emancipation — 
Lincoln's Letter to Drake — Missouri Abolishes Slavery- 
Emancipation in Maryland— Maryland Abolishes Slavery . .418 

XXXI 

Shaping of the Presidential Campaign — Criticisms of Mr. Lincoln 

— Chase's Presidential Ambitions — The Pomeroy Circular — 
Cleveland Convention — Attempt to Nominate Grant — Meet- 
ing of Baltimore Convention — Lincoln's Letter to Schurz — 
Platform of Republican Convention — Lincoln Renominated — 
Refuses to Indicate Preference for Vice-President— Johnson 
Nominated for Vice-President— Lincoln's Speech to Committee 
of Notification— Reference to Mexico in his Letter of Accept- 
ance — The French in Mexico 437 

XXXII 

The Bogus Proclamation — The Wade-Davis Manifesto— Resig- 
nation of Mr. Chase — Fessenden Succeeds Him— The Greeley 
Peace Conference— Jaquess-Gilmore Mission — Letter of Ray- 
mond—Bad Outlook for the Election — Mr. Lincoln on the Issues 



CONTENTS xv 

PAGE 

of the Campaign — President's Secret Memorandum— Meeting 
of Democratic National Convention— McClellan Nominated— 
His Letter of Acceptance — Lincoln Reelected— His Speech on 
Night of Election— The Electoral Vote— Annual Message of 
December 6, 1864 — Resignation of McClellan from the 
Army 453 

XXXIII 

The Thirteenth Amendment— The President's Speech on its 
Adoption— The Two Constitutional Amendments of Lincoln's 
Term— Lincoln on Peace and Slavery in his Annual Message 
of December 6, 1864 — Blair's Mexican Project— The Hamp- 
ton Roads Conference 47' 

XXXIV 

Blair— Chase Chief Justice — Speed Succeeds Bates— McCulloch 
Succeeds Fessenden — Resignation of Mr. Usher— Lincoln's 
Offer of $400,000,000— The Second Inaugural — Lincoln's 
Literary Rank— His Last Speech 487 

XXXV 

Depreciation of Confederate Currency— Rigor of Conscription- 
Dissatisfaction with the Confederate Government — Lee Gen- 
eral-in-Chief— J. E. Johnston Reappointed to Oppose Sher- 
man's March — Value of Slave Property Gone in Richmond- 
Davis's Recommendation of Emancipation — Benjamin's Last 
Despatch to Slidell — Condition of the Army when Lee took 
Command— Lee Attempts Negotiations with Grant— Lincoln's 
Directions— Lee and Davis Agree upon Line of Retreat- 
Assault on Fort Stedman— Five Forks — Evacuation of Peters- 
burg—Surrender of Richmond— Pursuit of Lee — Surrender of 
Lee— Burning of Richmond — Lincoln in Richmond .... 499 

XXXVI 

Lincoln's Interviews with Campbell — Withdraws Authority for 
Meeting of Virginia Legislature— Conference of Davis and 
Johnston at Greensboro— Johnston Asks for an Armistice— 



xvi CONTENTS 

PACE 

Meeting of Sherman and Johnston— Their Agreement — Re- 
jected at Washington— Surrender of Johnston — Surrender of 
other Confederate Forces — End of the Rebel Navy— Capture 
of Jefferson Davis— Surrender of E. Kirby Smith— Number 
of Confederates Surrendered and Exchanged — Reduction of 
Federal Army to a Peace Footing — Grand Review of the 
Army 519 

XXXVII 

The 14th of April — Celebration at Fort Sumter— Last Cabinet 
Meeting— Lincoln's Attitude toward Threats of Assassination 
— Booth's Plot— Ford's Theater— Fate of the Assassins— The 
Mourning Pageant 530 

XXXVIII 

Lincoln's Early Environment— Its Effect on his Character— His 
Attitude toward Slavery and the Slaveholder— His Schooling 
in Disappointment — His Seeming Failures — His Real Suc- 
cesses—The Final Trial — His Achievements— His Place in 
History 549 

Index 557 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Ancestry — Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks — Rock 
Spring Farm — Lincoln's Birth — Kentucky Schools — 
The Journey to Indiana — Pigeon Creek Settlement — 
Indiana Schools — Sally Bush Lincoln — Gentryi'ille — 
Work and Books — Satires and Sermons — Flatboat Voy- 
age to New Orleans — The Journey to Illinois 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the sixteenth President of 
jLX the United States, was born in a log cabin in 
the backwoods of Kentucky on the 12th day of Feb- 
ruary, 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was sixth 
in direct line of descent from Samuel Lincoln, who 
emigrated from England to Massachusetts in i(»,v x - 
Following the prevailing drift of American settlement, 
these descendants had, during a century and a half, 
successively moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey, 
from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania 
to Virginia, and from Virginia to Kentucky; while 
collateral branches of the family eventually made homes 
in other parts of the West. In Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia some of them had acquired considerable prop- 
erty and local prominence. 

In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, the President's 
grandfather, was able to pay into the public treasury 
of Virginia "one hundred and sixty pounds, current 
money," for which he received a warrant, directed to 



4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the "Principal Surveyor of any County within the 
commonwealth of Virginia," to lay off in one or more 
surveys for Abraham Linkhorn, his heirs or assigns, 
the quantity of four hundred acres of land. The 
error in spelling the name was a blunder of the clerk 
who made out the warrant. 

With this warrant and his family of five children — 
Mordecai, Josiah, Mary, Nancy, and Thomas — he 
moved to Kentucky, then still a county of Virginia, in 
1780, and began opening a farm. Four years later, 
while at work with his three boys in the edge of his 
clearing, a party of Indians, concealed in the brush, 
shot and killed him. Josiah, the second son, ran to 
a neighboring fort for assistance; Mordecai, the eld- 
est, hurried to the cabin for his gun, leaving Thomas, 
youngest of the family, a child of six years, by his 
father. Mordecai had just taken down his rifle from 
its convenient resting-place over the door of the cabin 
when, turning, he saw an Indian in his war-paint stoop- 
ing to seize the child. He took quick aim through a 
loop-hole, shot, and killed the savage, at which the 
little boy also ran to the house, and from this citadel 
Mordecai continued firing at the Indians until Josiah 
brought help from the fort. 

It was doubtless this misfortune which rapidly 
changed the circumstances of the family. 1 Kentucky 
was yet a wild, new country. As compared with later 
periods of emigration, settlement was slow and pioneer 
life a hard struggle. So it was probably under the 
stress of poverty, as well as by the marriage of the 
older children, that the home was gradually broken 
up, and Thomas Lincoln became "even in childhood 
. . . a wandering laboring boy, and grew up lit- 

1 By the law of primogeniture, pealed in Virginia, the family estate 
which at that date was still unre- went to Mordecai, the eldest son. 



THOMAS LINCOLN AND NANCY HANKS 5 

erally without education. . . . Before he was 
grown he passed one year as a hired hand with his 
uncle Isaac on Watauga, a branch of the Holston 
River." Later, he seems to have undertaken to learn 
the trade of carpenter in the shop of Joseph Hanks in 
Elizabethtown. 

When Thomas Lincoln was about twenty-eight years 
old he married Nancy Hanks, a niece of his employer, 
near Beechland, in Washington County. She was a 
good-looking young woman of twenty-three, also from 
Virginia, and so far superior to her husband in educa- 
tion that she could read and write, and taught him 
how to sign his name. Neither one of the young cou- 
ple had any money or property; but in those days liv- 
ing was not expensive, and they doubtless considered 
his trade a sufficient provision for the future. He 
brought her to a little house in Elizabethtown, where 
a daughter was born to them the following year. 

During the next twelvemonth Thomas Lincoln either 
grew tired of his carpenter work, or found the wages 
he was able to earn insufficient to meet his growing 
household expenses. He therefore bought a little farm 
on the Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in what was 
then Hardin and is now La Rue County, three miles 
from Hodgensville, and thirteen miles from Elizabeth- 
town. Having no means, he of course bought the 
place on credit, a transaction not so difficult when we 
remember that in that early day there was plenty of 
land to be bought for mere promises to pay ; under the 
disadvantage, however, that farms to be had on these 
terms were usually of a very poor quality, on which 
energetic or forehanded men did not care to waste 
their labor. It was a kind of land generally known 
in the West as "barrens" — rolling upland, with very 
thin, unproductive soil. Its momentary usefulness was 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that it was partly cleared and cultivated, that an indif- 
ferent cabin stood on it ready to be occupied, and that 
it had one specially attractive as well as useful fea- 
ture — a fine spring of water, prettily situated amid a 
graceful clump of foliage, because of which the place 
was called Rock Spring Farm. The change of abode 
was perhaps in some respects an improvement upon 
Elizabethtown. To pioneer families in deep poverty, a 
little farm offered many more resources than a town 
lot — space, wood, water, greens in the spring, berries 
in the summer, nuts in the autumn, small game every- 
where — and they were fully accustomed to the loss of 
companionship. On this farm, and in this cabin, the 
future President of the United States was born, on 
the 1 2th of February, 1809, and here the first four 
years of his childhood were spent. 

When Abraham was about four years old the Lin- 
coln home was changed to a much better farm of two 
hundred and thirty-eight acres on Knob Creek, six 
miles from Hodgensville, bought by Thomas Lincoln, 
again on credit, for the promise to pay one hundred 
and eighteen pounds. A year later he conveyed two 
hundred acres of it by deed to a new purchaser. In 
this new home the family spent four years more, and 
while here Abraham and his sister Sarah began going 
to A B C schools. Their first teacher was Zacha- 
riah Riney, who taught near the Lincoln cabin; the 
next, Caleb Hazel, at a distance of about four miles. 

Thomas Lincoln was evidently one of those easy- 
going, good-natured men who carry the virtue of con- 
tentment to an extreme. He appears never to have 
exerted himself much beyond the attainment of a 
necessary subsistence. By a little farming and occa- 
sional jobs at his trade, he seems to have supplied his 
family with food and clothes. There is no record that 



THE JOURNEY TO INDIANA 7 

he made any payment on either of his farms. The 
fever of westward emigration was in the air, and, lis- 
tening to glowing accounts of rich lands and newer 
settlements in Indiana, he had neither valuable pos- 
sessions nor cheerful associations to restrain the nat- 
ural impulse of every frontiersman to "move." In 
this determination his carpenter's skill served him a 
good purpose, and made the enterprise not only feas- 
ible, but reasonably cheap. In the fall of 1816 he 
built himself a small flatboat, which he launched at the 
mouth of Knob Creek, half a mile from his cabin, on 
the waters of the Rolling Fork. This stream would 
float him to Salt River, and Salt River to the Ohio. 
He also thought to combine a little speculation with 
his undertaking. Part of his personal property he 
traded for four hundred gallons of whisky ; then, load- 
ing the rest on his boat with his carpenter's tools and 
the whisky, he made the voyage, with the help of the 
current, down the Rolling Fork to Salt River, down 
Salt River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to Thomp- 
son's Ferry, in Perry County, on the Indiana shore. 
The boat capsized once on the way, but he saved most 
of the cargo. 

Sixteen miles out from the river he found a location 
in the forest which suited him. Since his boat would 
not tloat up-stream, he sold it, left his property with a 
settler, and trudged back home to Kentucky, all the way 
on foot, to bring his wife and the two children — Sarah, 
nine years old, and Abraham, seven. Another son 
had been born to them some years before, but had died 
when only three days old. This time the trip to In- 
diana was made with the aid of two horses, used by 
the wife and children for riding and to carry their 
little equipage for camping at night by the way. In 
a straight line, the distance is about fifty miles; but 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it was probably doubled by the very few roads it was 
possible to follow. 

Having reached the Ohio and crossed to where he 
had left his goods on the Indiana side, he hired a 
wagon, which carried them and his family the remain- 
ing sixteen miles through the forest to the spot he had 
chosen, which in due time became the Lincoln farm. 
It was a piece of heavily timbered land, one and a 
half miles east of what has since become the village 
of Gentryville, in Spencer County. The lateness of 
the autumn compelled him to provide a shelter as 
quickly as possible, and he built what is known on 
the frontier as a half-faced camp, about fourteen feet 
square. This structure differed from a cabin in that 
it was closed on only three sides, and open to the 
weather on the fourth. It was usual to build the fire 
in front of the open side, and the necessity of provid- 
ing a chimney was thus avoided. He doubtless in- 
tended it for a mere temporary shelter, and as such 
it would have sufficed for good weather in the sum- 
mer season. But it was a rude provision for the winds 
and snows of an Indiana winter. It illustrates Thomas 
Lincoln's want of energy, that the family remained 
housed in this primitive camp for nearly a whole year. 
He must, however, not be too hastily blamed for his 
dilatory improvement. It is not likely that he re- 
mained altogether idle. A more substantial cabin was 
probably begun, and, besides, there was the heavy work 
of clearing away the timber — that is, cutting down the 
large trees, chopping them into suitable lengths, and 
rolling them together into great log-heaps to be burned, 
or splitting them into rails to fence the small field upon 
which he managed to raise a patch of corn and other 
things during the ensuing summer. 

Thomas Lincoln's arrival was in the autumn of 



GENTRYVILLE 9 

1816. That same winter Indiana was admitted to the 
Union as a State. There were as yet no roads worthy 
of the name to or from the settlement formed by him- 
self and seven or eight neighbors at various distances. 
The village of Gentryville was not even begun. There 
was no sawmill to saw lumber. Breadstuff could 
be had only by sending young Abraham, on horseback, 
seven miles, with a bag of corn to be ground on a 
hand grist-mill. In the course of two or three years 
a road from Corydon to Evansville was laid out, run- 
ning past the Lincoln farm ; and perhaps two or three 
years afterward another from Rockport to Blooming- 
ton, crossing the former. This gave rise to Gentry- 
ville. James Gentry entered the land at the cross- 
roads. Gideon Romine opened a small store, and their 
joint efforts succeeded in getting a post-office estab- 
lished, from which the village gradually grew. For 
a year after his arrival Thomas Lincoln remained a 
mere squatter. Then he entered the quarter-section 
(one hundred and sixty acres) on which he opened 
his farm, and made some payments on his entry, but 
only enough in eleven years to obtain a patent for 
one half of it. 

About the time that he moved into his new cabin, 
relatives and friends followed from Kentucky, and 
some of them in turn occupied the half-faced camp. 
In the ensuing autumn much sickness prevailed in the 
Pigeon Creek settlement. It was thirty miles to the 
nearest doctor, and several persons died, among them 
Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of young Abraham. 
The mechanical skill of Thomas was called upon to 
make the coffins, the necessary lumber for which had 
to be cut with a whip-saw. 

The death of Mrs. Lincoln was a serious loss to her 
husband and children. Abraham's sister Sarah was 



io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

only eleven years old, and the tasks and cares of the 
little household were altogether too heavy for her 
years and experience. Nevertheless, they struggled on 
bravely through the winter and next summer, but in 
the autumn of 1819 Thomas Lincoln went back to 
Kentucky and married Sally Bush Johnston, whom he 
had known and, it is said, courted when she was merely 
Sally Bush. Johnston, to whom she was married about 
the time Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, had died, 
leaving her with three children. She came of a better 
station in life than Thomas, and is represented as a 
woman of uncommon energy and thrift, possessing 
excellent qualities both of head and heart. The house- 
hold goods which she brought to the Lincoln home in 
Indiana filled a four-horse wagon. Not only were her 
own three children well clothed and cared for, but she 
was able at once to provide little Abraham and Sarah 
with home comforts to which they had been strangers 
during the whole of their young lives. Under her 
example and urging, Thomas at once supplied the yet 
unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and 
existence took on a new aspect for all the inmates. 
Under her management and control, all friction and 
jealousy was avoided between the two sets of children, 
and contentment, if not happiness, reigned in the little 
cabin. 

The new stepmother quickly perceived the superior 
aptitudes and abilities of Abraham. She became very 
fond of him, and in every way encouraged his marked 
inclination to study and improve himself. The op- 
portunities for this were meager enough. Mr. Lincoln 
himself has drawn a vivid outline of the situation : 

"It was a wild region, with many bears and other 
wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. 
There were some schools so called, but no qualifica- 



FRONTIER SCHOOLS u 

tion was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', 
writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a strag- 
gler supposed to understand Latin happened to so- 
journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a 
wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite am- 
bition for education." 

As Abraham was only in his eighth year when he 
left Kentucky, the little beginnings he had learned in 
the schools kept by Riney and Hazel in that State must 
have been very slight — probably only his alphabet, or 
possibly three or four pages of Webster's "Elementary 
Spelling Book." It is likely that the multiplication 
table was as yet an unfathomed mystery, and that he 
could not write or read more than the words he spelled. 
There is no record at what date he was able again to 
go to school in Indiana. Some of his schoolmates 
think it was in his tenth year, or soon after he fell 
under the care of his stepmother. The school-house 
was a low cabin of round logs, a mile and a half from 
the Lincoln home, with split logs or "puncheons" for 
a floor, split logs roughly leveled with an ax and set 
up on legs for benches, and a log cut out of one end 
and the space filled in with squares of greased paper 
for window panes. The main light in such primitive 
halls of learning was admitted by the open door. It 
was a type of school building common in the early 
West, in which many a statesman gained the first rudi- 
ments of knowledge. Very often Webster's "Elemen- 
tary Spelling Book" was the only text-book. Abra- 
ham's first Indiana school was probably held five years 
before Gentryville was located and a store established 
there. Until then it was difficult, if not impossible, to 
obtain books, slates, pencils, pen, ink, and paper, and 
their use was limited to settlers who had brought them 
when they came. It is reasonable to infer that the 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln family had no such luxuries, and, as the Pig- 
eon Creek settlement numbered only eight or ten fami- 
lies, there must have been very few pupils to attend this 
first school. Nevertheless, it is worthy of special note 
that even under such difficulties and limitations, the 
American thirst for education planted a school-house 
on the very forefront of every settlement. 

Abraham's second school in Indiana was held about 
the time he was fourteen years old, and the third in his 
seventeenth year. By this time he probably had better 
teachers and increased facilities, though with the dis- 
advantage of having to walk four or five miles to the 
school-house. He learned to write, and was provided 
with pen, ink, and a copy-book, and probably a very 
limited supply of writing-paper, for facsimiles have 
been printed of several scraps and fragments upon 
which he had carefully copied tables, rules, and sums 
from his arithmetic, such as those of long measure, 
land measure, and dry measure, and examples in mul- 
tiplication and compound division. All this indicates 
that he pursued his studies with a very unusual pur- 
pose and determination, not only to understand them 
at the moment, but to imprint them indelibly upon his 
memory, and even to retain them in visible form for 
reference when the school-book might no longer be in 
his hands or possession. 

Mr. Lincoln has himself written that these three 
different schools were "kept successively by Andrew 

Crawford, Swaney, and Azel W. Dorsey." 

Other witnesses state the succession somewhat differ- 
ently. The important fact to be gleaned from what we 
learn about Mr. Lincoln's schooling is that the instruc- 
tion given him by these five different teachers — two 
in Kentucky and three in Indiana, in short sessions of 
attendance scattered over a period of nine years — 



WORK AND BOOKS 13 

made up in all less than a twelvemonth. He said of 
it in i860, "Abraham now thinks that the aggre- 
gate of all his schooling did not amount to one year." 
This distribution of the tuition he received was doubt- 
less an advantage. Had it all been given him at his 
first school in Indiana, it would probably not have car- 
ried him half through Webster's "Elementary Spell- 
ing Book." The lazy or indifferent pupils who were 
his schoolmates doubtless forgot what was taught them 
at one time before they had opportunity at another ; but 
to the exceptional character of Abraham, these widely 
separated fragments of instruction were precious steps 
to self-help, of which he made unremitting use. 

It is the concurrent testimony of his early compan- 
ions that he employed all his spare moments in keeping 
on with some one of his studies. His stepmother says : 
"Abe read diligently. ... He read every book 
he could lay his hands on ; and when he came across 
a passage that struck him, he would write it down on 
boards, if he had no paper, and keep it there until he 
did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, 
repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, 
in which he put down all things, and thus preserved 
them." There is no mention that either he or other 
pupils had slates and slate-pencils to use at school or 
at home, but he found a ready substitute in pieces 
of board. It is stated that he occupied his long even- 
ings at home doing sums on the fire-shovel. Iron fire- 
shovels were a rarity among pioneers; they used, in- 
stead, a broad, thin clapboard with one end narrowed 
to a handle. In cooking by the open fire, this domestic 
implement was of the first necessity to arrange piles 
of live coals on the hearth, over which they set their 
"skillet" and "oven," upon the lids of which live coals 
were also heaped. 



i 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Upon such a wooden shovel Abraham was able to 
work his sums by the nickering firelight. If he had 
no pencil, he could use charcoal, and probably did so. 
When it was covered with figures he would take a 
drawing-knife, shave it off clean, and begin again. 
Under these various disadvantages, and by the help 
of such troublesome expedients, Abraham Lincoln 
worked his way to so much of an education as placed 
him far ahead of his schoolmates, and quickly abreast 
of the acquirements of his various teachers. The field 
from which he could glean knowledge was very lim- 
ited, though he diligently borrowed every book in the 
neighborhood. The list is a short one — "Robinson 
Crusoe," yEsop's "Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," Weems's "Life of Washington," and a "History 
of the United States." When he had exhausted other 
books, he even resolutely attacked the Revised Statutes 
of Indiana, which Dave Turnham, the constable, had 
in daily use and permitted him to come to his house 
and read. 

It needs to be borne in mind that all this effort at 
self -education extended from first to last over a period 
of twelve or thirteen years, during which he was also 
performing hard manual labor, and proves a degree 
of steady, unflinching perseverance in a line of con- 
duct that brings into strong relief a high aim and the 
consciousness of abundant intellectual power. He was 
not permitted to forget that he was on an uphill path, 
a stern struggle with adversity. The leisure hours 
which he was able to devote to his reading, his penman- 
ship, and his arithmetic were by no means overabun- 
dant. Writing of his father's removal from Kentucky 
to Indiana, he says : 

"He settled in an unbroken forest, and the clearing 
away of surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abra- 



FARM WORK 15 

ham, though very young, was large of his age, and 
had an ax put into his hands at once; and from that 
till within his twenty-third year he was almost con- 
stantly handling that most useful instrument — less, of 
course, in plowing and harvesting seasons." 

John Hanks mentions the character of his work a 
little more in detail. "He and I worked barefoot, 
grubbed it, plowed, mowed, and cradled together; 
plowed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn." The 
sum of it all is that from his boyhood until after he 
was of age, most of his time was spent in the hard 
and varied muscular labor of the farm and the forest, 
sometimes on his father's place, sometimes as a hired 
hand for other pioneers. In this very useful but com- 
monplace occupation he had, however, one advantage. 
He was not only very early in his life a tall, strong 
country boy, but as he grew up he soon became a tall, 
strong, sinewy man. He early attained the unusual 
height of six feet four inches, with arms of propor- 
tionate length. This gave him a degree of power and 
facility as an ax-man which few had or were able to 
acquire. He was therefore usually able to lead his 
fellows in efforts of both muscle and mind. He per- 
formed the tasks of his daily labor and mastered the 
lessons of his scanty schooling with an ease and rapidity 
they were unable to attain. 

Twice during his life in Indiana this ordinary rou- 
tine was somewhat varied. When he was sixteen, 
while working for a man who lived at the mouth of 
Anderson's Creek, it was part of his duty to manage 
a ferry-boat which transported passengers across the 
Ohio River. It was doubtless this which three years 
later brought him a new experience, that he himself 
related in these words : 

"When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

made his first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. 
He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the 
owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The 
nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, 
made it necessary for them to linger and trade along 
the sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by 
seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They 
were hurt some in the melee, but succeeded in driving 
the negroes from the boat, and then 'cut cable,' 'weighed 
anchor,' and left." 

This commercial enterprise was set on foot by Mr. 
Gentry, the founder of Gentryville. The affair shows 
us that Abraham had gained an enviable standing in 
the village as a man of honesty, skill, and judgment — 
one who could be depended on to meet such emer- 
gencies as might arise in selling their bacon and other 
produce to the cotton-planters along the shores of the 
lower Mississippi. 

By this time Abraham's education was well ad- 
vanced. His handwriting, his arithmetic, and his gen- 
eral intelligence were so good that he had occasionally 
been employed to help in the Gentryville store, and 
Gentry thus knew by personal test that he was entirely 
capable of assisting his son Allen in the trading expe- 
dition to New Orleans. For Abraham, on the other 
hand, it was an event which must have opened up 
wide vistas of future hope and ambition. Allen Gen- 
try probably was nominal supercargo and steersman, 
but we may easily surmise that Lincoln, as the "bow 
oar," carried his full half of general responsibility. 
For this service the elder Gentry paid him eight dol- 
lars a month and his passage home on a steamboat. 
It was the future President's first eager look into the 
wide, wide world. 

Abraham's devotion to nis books and his sums 



INDIANA HUNTERS 17 

stands forth in more striking light from the fact that 
his habits differed from those of most frontier boys in 
one important particular. Almost every youth of the 
backwoods early became a habitual hunter and supe- 
rior marksman. The Indiana woods were yet swarm- 
ing with game, and the larder of every cabin depended 
largely upon this great storehouse of wild meat. 1 The 
Pigeon Creek settlement was especially fortunate on 
this point. There was in the neighborhood of the Lin- 
coln home what was known in the West as a deer-lick 
— that is, there existed a feeble salt-spring, which im- 
pregnated the soil in its vicinity or created little pools 
of brackish water — and various kinds of animals, par- 
ticularly deer, resorted there to satisfy their natural 
craving for salt by drinking from these or licking the 
moist earth. Hunters took advantage of this habit, 
and one of their common customs was to watch in the 
dusk or at night, and secure their approaching prey 
by an easy shot. Skill with the rifle and success in 
the chase were points of friendly emulation. In many 
localities the boy or youth who shot a squirrel in any 
part of the animal except its head became the butt of 
the jests of his companions and elders. Yet, under 
such conditions and opportunities Abraham was neither 
a hunter nor a marksman. He tells us : 

"A few days before the completion of his eighth 
year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild tur- 
keys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, 
with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack 

l Franklin points out how much to afford freedom and subsistence 

this resource of the early Americans to any man who can bait a hook or 

contributed to their spirit of inde- pull a trigger." 

pendence by saying: (See " The Century Magazine," 

"I can retire cheerfully with " Franklin as a Diplomatist," Octo- 

my little family into the boundless ber, 1899, p. 888.) 
woods of America, which are sure 



1 8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a 
trigger on any larger game." 

The hours which other boys spent in roaming the 
woods or lying in ambush at the deer-lick, he preferred 
to devote to his effort at mental improvement. It can 
hardly be claimed that he did this from calculating am- 
bition. It was a native intellectual thirst, the signifi- 
cance of which he did not himself yet understand. 
Such exceptional characteristics manifested themselves 
only in a few matters. In most particulars he grew 
up as the ordinary backwoods boy develops into the 
youth and man. As he was subjected to their usual 
labors, so also he was limited to their usual pastimes 
and enjoyments. 

The varied amusements common to our day were 
not within their reach. The period of the circus, the 
political speech, and the itinerant show had not yet 
come. Schools, as we have seen, and probably meet- 
ings or church services, were irregular, to be had only 
at long intervals. Primitive athletic games and com- 
monplace talk, enlivened by frontier jests and stories, 
formed the sum of social intercourse when half a dozen 
or a score of settlers of various ages came together at 
a house-raising or corn-husking, or when mere chance 
brought them at the same time to the post-office or 
the country store. On these occasions, however, Abra- 
ham was, according to his age, always able to con- 
tribute his full share or more. Most of his natural 
aptitudes equipped him especially to play his part well. 
He had quick intelligence, ready sympathy, a cheerful 
temperament, a kindling humor, a generous and help- 
ful spirit. He was both a ready talker and apprecia- 
tive listener. By virtue of his tall stature and unusual 
strength of sinew and muscle, he was from the begin- 
ning a leader in all athletic games; by reason of his 



SATIRES AND SERMONS 19 

studious habits and his extraordinarily retentive mem- 
ory, he quickly became the best story-teller among his 
companions. Even the slight training he gained from 
his studies greatly quickened his perceptions and broad- 
ened and steadied the strong reasoning faculty with 
which nature had endowed him. 

As the years of his youth passed by, his less gifted 
comrades learned to accept his judgments and to wel- 
come his power to entertain and instruct them. On 
his own part, he gradually learned to write not merely 
with the hand, but also with the mind — to think. It 
was an easy transition for him from remembering the 
jingle of a commonplace rhyme to the constructing of 
a doggerel verse, and he did not neglect the oppor- 
tunity of practising his penmanship in such im- 
promptus. Tradition also relates that he added to his 
list of stories and jokes humorous imitations from the 
sermons of eccentric preachers. But tradition has very 
likely both magnified and distorted these alleged ex- 
ploits of his satire and mimicry. All that can be said 
of them is that his youth was marked by intellectual 
activity far beyond that of his companions. 

It is an interesting coincidence that nine days before 
the birth of Abraham Lincoln Congress passed the act 
to organize the Territory of Illinois, which his future 
life and career were destined to render so illustrious. 
Another interesting coincidence may be found in the 
fact that in the same year (18 18) in which Congress 
definitely fixed the number of stars and stripes in the 
national flag, Illinois was admitted as a State to the 
Union. The Star of Empire was moving westward at 
an accelerating speed. Alabama was admitted in 1819, 
Maine in 1820, Missouri in 1821. Little by little the 
line of frontier settlement was pushing itself toward 
the Mississippi. No sooner had the pioneer built him 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a cabin and opened his little farm, than during every 
summer canvas-covered wagons wound their toilsome 
way over the new-made roads into the newer wilder- 
ness, while his eyes followed them with wistful eager- 
ness. Thomas Lincoln and his Pigeon Creek relatives 
and neighbors could not forever withstand the conta- 
gion of this example, and at length they yielded to 
the irrepressible longing by a common impulse. Mr. 
Lincoln writes : 

"March i, 1830, Abraham having just completed his 
twenty-first year, his father and family, with the fami- 
lies of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his step- 
mother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to 
Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn 
by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. 
They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there 
some time within the same month of March. His 
father and family settled a new place on the north side 
of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timber 
land and prairie, about ten miles westerly from De- 
catur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they 
removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten 
acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and 
raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. 
. . . The sons-in-law were temporarily settled in 
other places in the county. In the autumn all hands 
were greatly afflicted with ague and fever, to which 
they had not been used, and by which they were greatly 
discouraged, so much so that they determined on leav- 
ing the county. They remained, however, through the 
succeeding winter, which was the winter of the very 
celebrated 'deep snow' of Illinois." 



II 



Flatboat — New Salem — Election Clerk — Store and Mill 
— Kirk ham's "Grammar' — "Sangamo Journal" — The 
Talisman — Lincoln's Address, March 9, 1832 — Black 
Hawk War — Lincoln Elected Captain — Mustered out 
May 2 7, 1832 — Rc'cnlisted in Independent Spy Battalion 
— Finally Mustered out, June 16, 1832 — Defeated for 
the Legislature — Blacksmith or Lawyer? — The Lin- 
coln-Berry Store — Appointed Postmaster, May 7, 18 S3 
— National Politics 

THE life of Abraham Lincoln, or that part of it 
which will interest readers for all future time, 
properly begins in March, 183 1, after the winter of 
the "deep snow." According to frontier custom, being 
then twenty-one years old, he left his father's cabin 
to make his own fortune in the world. A man named 
Denton OfTutt. one of a class of local traders and 
speculators usually found about early Western settle- 
ments, had probably heard something of young Lin- 
coln's Indiana history, particularly that he had made 
a voyage on a flatboat from Indiana to New Orleans, 
and that he was strong, active, honest, and generally, 
as would be expressed in Western phrase, "a smart 
young fellow." He was therefore just the sort of 
man OfTutt needed for one of his trading enterprises. 
and Mr. Lincoln himself relates somewhat in detail 
how OfTutt engaged him and the beginning of the 
venture : 

"Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet residing in Macon 
County, hired themselves to Denton Offutt to take a 
flatboat from Beardstown, Illinois [on the Illinois 
River], to New Orleans; and for that purpose were 
to join him — Offutt — at Springfield, Illinois, so soon 
as the snow should go off. When it did go off, which 
was about the first of March, 1831, the county was 
so flooded as to make traveling by land impracticable, 
to obviate which difficulty they purchased a large 
canoe, and came down the Sangamon River in it. This 
is the time and the manner of Abraham's first entrance 
into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Spring- 
field, but learned from him that he had failed in getting 
a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring them- 
selves to him for twelve dollars per month each, and 
getting the timber out of the trees and building a boat 
at Old Sangamon town on the Sangamon River, seven 
miles northwest of Springfield, which boat they took 
to New Orleans, substantially upon the old contract." 

It needs here to be recalled that Lincoln's father was 
a carpenter, and that Abraham had no doubt acquired 
considerable skill in the use of tools during his boy- 
hood, and a practical knowledge of the construction 
of flatboats during his previous New Orleans trip, suf- 
ficient to enable him with confidence to undertake this 
task in shipbuilding. From the after history of both 
Johnston and Hanks, we know that neither of them 
was gifted with skill or industry, and it becomes clear 
that Lincoln was from the first leader of the party, 
master of construction, and captain of the craft. 

It took some time to build the boat, and before it 
was finished the Sangamon River had fallen so that 
the new craft stuck midway across the dam at Rut- 
ledge's Mill, at New Salem, a village of fifteen or 
twenty houses. The inhabitants came down to the 



ELECTION CLERK 23 

bank, and exhibited great interest in the fate of the 
boat, which, with its bow in the air and its stern under 
water, was half bird and half fish, and they probably 
jestingly inquired of the young captain whether he 
expected to dive or to fly to New Orleans. He was, 
however, equal to the occasion. He bored a hole in the 
bottom of the boat at the bow, and rigged some sort 
of lever or derrick to lift the stern, so that the water 
she had taken in behind ran out in front, enabling her 
to float over the partly submerged dam ; and this feat, 
in turn, caused great wonderment in the crowd at the 
novel expedient of bailing a boat by boring a hole in 
her bottom. 

This exploit of naval engineering fully established 
Lincoln's fame at New Salem, and grounded him so 
firmly in the esteem of his employer Offutt that the 
latter, already looking forward to his future useful- 
ness, at once engaged him to come back to New Salem. 
after his New Orleans voyage, to act as his clerk in 
a store. 

Once over the dam and her cargo reloaded, partly 
there and partly at Beardstown, the boat safely made 
the remainder of her voyage to New Orleans ; and, re- 
turning by steamer to St. Louis, Lincoln and Johnston 
(Hanks had turned back from St. Louis) continued on 
foot to Illinois, J< ihnston remaining at the family home, 
which had meanwhile been removed from Macon to 
Coles County, and Lincoln going to his employer and 
friends at New Salem. This was in July or August, 
[831. Neither Offutt nor his goods had yet arrived, 
and during his waiting he had a chance to show the 
New Salemites another accomplishment. An election 
was to be held, and one of the clerks was sick and 
failed to come. Scribes were not plenty on the fron- 
tier, and Mentor Graham, the clerk who was present, 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

looking around for a properly qualified colleague, no- 
ticed Lincoln, and asked him if he could write, to 
which he answered, in local idiom, that he "could 
make a few rabbit tracks," and was thereupon imme- 
diately inducted into his first office. He performed 
his duties not only to the general satisfaction, but so 
as to interest Graham, who was a schoolmaster, and 
afterward made himself very useful to Lincoln. 

Offutt finally arrived with a miscellaneous lot of 
goods, which Lincoln opened and put in order in a 
room that a former New Salem storekeeper was just 
ready to vacate, and whose remnant stock Offutt also 
purchased. Trade was evidently not brisk at New 
Salem, for the commercial zeal of Offutt led him to 
increase his venture by renting the Rutledge and Cam- 
eron mill, on whose historic dam the flatboat had 
stuck. For a while the charge of the mill was added 
to Lincoln's duties, until another clerk was engaged 
to help him. There is likewise good evidence that in 
addition to his duties at the store and the mill, Lincoln 
made himself generally useful — that he cut down trees 
and split rails enough to make a large hog-pen adjoin- 
ing the mill, a proceeding quite natural when we re- 
member that his hitherto active life and still growing 
muscles imperatively demanded the exercise which 
measuring calico or weighing out sugar and coffee 
failed to supply. 

We know from other incidents that he was possessed 
of ample bodily strength. In frontier life it is not only 
needed for useful labor of many kinds, but is also 
called upon to aid in popular amusement. There was 
a settlement in the neighborhood of New Salem called 
Clary's Grove, where lived a group of restless, rol- 
licking backwoodsmen with a strong liking for various 
forms of frontier athletics and rough practical jokes. 



KIRKHAM'S "GRAMMAR" 25 

In the progress of American settlement there has al- 
ways been a time, whether the frontier was in New 
England or Pennsylvania or Kentucky, or on the banks 
of the Mississippi, when the champion wrestler held 
some fraction of the public consideration accorded to 
the victor in the Olympic games of Greece. Until Lin- 
coln came, Jack Armstrong was the champion wrestler 
of Clary's Grove and New Salem, and picturesque 
stories are told how the neighborhood talk, inflamed 
by Offutt's fulsome laudation of his clerk, made Jack 
Armstrong feel that his fame was in danger. Lincoln 
put off the encounter as long as he could, and when 
the wrestling match finally came off neither could 
throw the other. The bystanders became satisfied that 
they were equally matched in strength and skill, and 
the cool courage which Lincoln manifested throughout 
the ordeal prevented the usual close of such incidents 
with a fight. Instead of becoming chronic enemies 
and leaders of a neighborhood feud, Lincoln's self- 
possession and good temper turned the contest into 
the beginning of a warm and lasting friendship. 

If Lincoln's muscles were at times hungry for work, 
not less so was his mind. He was already instinc- 
tively feeling his way to his destiny when, in conver- 
sation with Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, he indi- 
cated his desire to use some of his spare moments to 
increase his education, and confided to him his "no- 
tion to study English grammar." It was entirely in 
the nature of things that Graham should encourage 
this mental craving, and tell him: "If you expect to 
go before the public in any capacity, I think it the best 
thing you can do." Lincoln said that if he had a 
grammar he would begin at once. Graham was obliged 
to confess that there was no such book at New Salem, 
but remembered that there was one at Vaner's, six 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

miles away. Promptly after breakfast the next morn- 
ing Lincoln walked to Vaner's and procured the pre- 
cious volume, and, probably with Graham's occasional 
help, found no great difficulty in mastering its contents. 
While tradition does not mention any other study begun 
at that time, we may fairly infer that, slight as may 
have been Graham's education, he must have had other 
books from which, together with his friendly advice, 
Lincoln's intellectual hunger derived further stimulus 
and nourishment. 

In his duties at the store and his work at the mill, 
in his study of Kirkham's "Grammar," and educa- 
tional conversations with Mentor Graham, in the some- 
what rude but frank and hearty companionship of the 
citizens of New Salem and the exuberant boys of 
Clary's Grove, Lincoln's life for the second half of 
the year 1831 appears not to have been eventful, but 
was doubtless more comfortable and as interesting as 
had been his flatboat building and New Orleans voyage 
during the first half. He was busy in useful labor, and, 
though he had few chances to pick up scraps of school- 
ing, was beginning to read deeply in that book of hu- 
man nature, the profound knowledge of which ren- 
dered him such immense service in after years. 

The restlessness and ambition of the village of New 
Salem was many times multiplied in the restlessness 
and ambition of Springfield, fifteen or twenty miles 
away, which, located approximately near the geograph- 
ical center of Illinois, was already beginning to crave, 
if not yet to feel, its future destiny as the capital of 
the State. In November of the same year that aspir- 
ing town produced the first number of its weekly news- 
paper, the ''Sangamo Journal," and in its columns 
we begin to find recorded historical data. Situated 
in a region of alternating spaces of prairie and forest, 



THE TALISMAN 27 

of attractive natural scenery and rich soil, it was nev- 
ertheless at a great disadvantage in the means of 
commercial transportation. Lying sixty miles from 
Beardstown, the nearest landing on the Illinois River, 
the peculiarities of soil, climate, and primitive roads 
rendered travel and land carriage extremely difficult — 
often entirely impossible — for nearly half of every year. 
The very first number of the "Sangamo Journal" 
sounded its strongest note on the .then leading tenet 
of the Whig party — internal improvements by the gen- 
eral government, and active politics to secure them. In 
later numbers we learn that a regular Eastern mail had 
not been received for three weeks. The tide of immi- 
gration which was pouring into Illinois is illustrated 
in a tabular statement on the commerce of the Illinois 
River, showing that the steamboat arrivals at Beards- 
town had risen from one each in the years 1828 and 
1829, and only four in 1830, to thirty-two during the 
year 1831. This naturally directed the thoughts of 
travelers and traders to some better means of reach- 
ing the river landing than the frozen or muddy roads 
and impassable creeks and sloughs of winter and spring. 
The use of the Sangamon River, flowing within fixe 
miles of Springfield and emptying itself into the Illi- 
nois ten or fifteen miles from Beardstown, seemed for 
the present the only solution of the problem, and a pub- 
lic meeting was called to discuss the project. The 
deep snows of the winter of 1830-31 abundantly filled 
the channels of that stream, and the winter of 1831-32 
substantially repeated its swelling floods. Newcomers 
in that region were therefore warranted in drawing 
the inference that it might remain navigable for small 
craft. Public interest on the topic was greatly height- 
ened when one Captain Bogue, commanding a small 
steamer then at Cincinnati, printed a letter in the 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"Journal" of January 26, 1832, saying: "I intend to 
try to ascend the river [Sangamo] immediately on 
the breaking up of the ice." It was well understood 
that the chief difficulty would be that the short turns 
in the channels were liable to be obstructed by a gorge 
of driftwood and the limbs and trunks of overhanging 
trees. To provide for this, Captain Bogue's letter 
added : "I should be met at the mouth of the river by 
ten or twelve men, having axes with long handles 
under the direction of some experienced man. I shall 
deliver freight from St. Louis at the landing on the 
Sangamo River opposite the town of Springfield for 
thirty-seven and a half cents per hundred pounds." 
The "Journal" of February 16 contained an adver- 
tisement that the "splendid upper-cabin steamer Talis- 
man" would leave for Springfield, and the paper of 
March 1 announced her arrival at St. Louis on the 
22d of February with a full cargo. In due time the 
citizen committee appointed by the public meeting met 
the Talisman at the mouth of the Sangamon, and the 
"Journal" of March 29 announced with great flourish 
that the "steamboat Talisman, of one hundred and 
fifty tons burden, arrived at the Portland landing op- 
posite this town on Saturday last." There was great 
local rejoicing over this demonstration that the San- 
gamon was really navigable, and the "Journal" pro- 
claimed with exultation that Springfield "could no 
longer be considered an inland town." 

President Jackson's first term was nearing its close, 
and the Democratic party was preparing to reelect him. 
The Whigs, on their part, had held their first national 
convention in December, 1831, and nominated Henry 
Clay to dispute the succession. This nomination, made 
almost a year in advance of the election, indicates an 
unusual degree of political activity in the East, and 



CANDIDATE FOR LEGISLATURE 29 

voters in the new State of Illinois were fired with an 
equal party zeal. During the months of January and 
February, 1832, no less than six citizens of Sangamon 
County announced themselves in the "Sangamo Jour- 
nal" as candidates for the State legislature, the elec- 
tion for which was not to occur until August; and 
the "Journal" of March 15 printed a long letter, ad- 
dressed "To the People of Sangamon County," under 
date of the ninth, signed A. Lincoln, and beginning : 
"Fellow-Citizens : Having become a candidate for 
the honorable office of one of your representatives in 
the next general assembly of this State, in accordance 
with an established custom and the principles of true 
republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to 
you, the people whom I propose to represent, my senti- 
ments with regard to local affairs." He then takes up 
and discusses in an eminently methodical and practical 
way the absorbing topic of the moment — the Whig 
doctrine of internal improvements and its local appli- 
cation, the improvement of the Sangamon River. He 
mentions that meetings have been held to propose the 
construction of a railroad, and frankly acknowledges 
that "no other improvement that reason will justify 
us in hoping for can equal in utility the railroad," but 
contends that its enormous cost precludes any such 
hope, and that, therefore, "the improvement of the 
Sangamon River is an object much better suited to 
our infant resources." Relating his experience in 
building and navigating his flatboat, and his observa- 
tion of the stage of the water since then, he draws the 
very plausible conclusion that by straightening its 
channel and clearing away its driftwood the stream can 
be made navigable "to vessels of from twenty-five to 
thirty tons burden for at least one half of all common 
years, and to vessels of much greater burden a part 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of the time." His letter very modestly touches a few 
other points of needed legislation — a law against usury, 
laws to promote education, and amendments to estray 
and road laws. The main interest for us, however, is 
in the frank avowal of his personal ambition. 

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. 
Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I 
have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed 
of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their 
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this 
ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and un- 
known to many of you. I was born, and have ever 
remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have 
no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recom- 
mend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the 
independent voters of the country, and if elected they 
will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall 
be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if 
the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me 
in the background, I have been too familiar with disap- 
pointments to be very much chagrined." 

This written and printed address gives us an accu- 
rate measure of the man and the time. When he wrote 
this document he was twenty-three years old. He had 
been in the town and county only about nine months 
of actual time. As Sangamon County covered an esti- 
mated area of twenty-one hundred and sixty square 
miles, he could know but little of either it or its peo- 
ple. How dared a '"friendless, uneducated boy, work- 
ing on a flatboat at twelve dollars a month," with "no 
wealthy or popular friends to recommend" him, aspire 
to the honors and responsibilities of a legislator ? The 
only answer is that he was prompted by that intuition 
of genius, that consciousness of powers which justify 
their claims by their achievements. When we scan 



BLACK HAWK WAR 31 

the circumstances more closely, we find distinct evi- 
dence of some reason for his confidence. Relatively 
speaking, he was neither uneducated nor friendless. 
His acquirements were already far beyond the simple 
elements of reading, writing, and ciphering. He wrote 
a good, clear, serviceable hand ; he could talk well and 
reason cogently. The simple, manly style of his printed 
address fully equals in literary ability that of the aver- 
age collegian in the twenties. His migration from 
Indiana to Illinois and his two voyages to New Or- 
leans had given him a glimpse of the outside world. 
I lis natural logic readily grasped the significance of the 
railroad as a new factor in transportation, although 
the first American locomotive had been built only one 
year, and ten to fifteen years were yet to elapse before 
the first railroad train was to run in Illinois. 

One other motive probably had its influence. He 
tells us that Offutt's business was failing, and his quick 
judgment warned him that he would soon be out of a 
job as clerk. This, however, could be only a secondary 
reason for announcing himself as a candidate, for the 
election was not to occur till August, and even if he 
were elected there would be neither service nor salary 
till the coining winter. His venture into politics must 
therefore be ascribed to the feeling which he so frankly 
announced in his letter, his ambition to become useful 
to his fellow-men — the impulse that throughout history 
has singled out the great leaders of mankind. 

In this particular instance a crisis was also at hand, 
calculated to develop and utilize the impulse. Just 
about a month after the publication of Lincoln's an- 
nouncement, the "Sangamo Journal" of April 19 
printed an official call from Governor Reynolds, di- 
rected to General Neale of the Illinois militia, to or- 
ganize six hundred volunteers of his brigade for mili- 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tary service in a campaign against the Indians under 
Black Hawk, the war chief of the Sacs, who, in defiance 
of treaties and promises, had formed a combination 
with other tribes during the winter, and had now 
crossed back from the west to the east side of the Mis- 
sissippi River with the determination to reoccupy their 
old homes in the Rock River country toward the north- 
ern end of the State. 

In the memoranda which Mr. Lincoln furnished for 
a campaign biography, he thus relates what followed 
the call for troops : 

"Abraham joined a volunteer company, and, to his 
own surprise, was elected captain of it. He says he 
has not since had any success in life which gave him so 
much satisfaction. He went to the campaign, served 
near three months, met the ordinarv hardships of such 
an expedition, but was in no battle. Official docu- 
ments furnish some further interesting details. As 
already said, the call was printed in the "Sangamo 
Journal" of April 19. On April 21 the company was 
organized at Richland, Sangamon County, and on 
April 28 was inspected and mustered into service at 
Beardstown and attached to Colonel Samuel Thomp- 
son's regiment, the Fourth Illinois Mounted Volun- 
teers. They marched at once to the hostile frontier. As 
the campaign shaped itself, it probably became evident 
to the company that they were not likely to meet any 
serious fighting, and, not having been enlisted for any 
stated period, they became clamorous to return home. 
The governor therefore had them and other companies 
mustered out of service, at the mouth of Fox River, 
on May 27. Not, however, wishing to weaken his 
forces before the arrival of new levies already on the 
way, he called for volunteers to remain twenty days 
longer. Lincoln had gone to the frontier to perform 



LINCOLN REENLISTS 33 

real service, not merely to enjoy military rank or reap 
military glory. On the same day, therefore, on which he 
was mustered out as captain, he reenlisted, and became 
Private Lincoln in Captain Iles's company of mounted 
volunteers, organized apparently principally for scout- 
ing service, and sometimes called the Independent Spy 
Battalion. Among the other officers who imitated this 
patriotic example were General Whiteside and Major 
John T. Stuart, Lincoln's later law partner. The Inde- 
pendent Spy Battalion, having faithfully performed its 
new term of service, was finally mustered out on June 
1 6, 1832. Lincoln and his messmate, George M. Har- 
rison, had the misfortune to have their horses stolen the 
day before, but Harrison relates : 

"I laughed at our fate and he joked at it, and we all 
started off merrily. The generous men of our com- 
pany walked and rode by turns with us, and we fared 
about equal with the rest. But for this generosity our 
legs would have had to do the better work ; for in that 
day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to 
steal, and, whether on horse or afoot, we always had 
company, for many of the horses' backs were too sore 
for riding." 

Lincoln must have reached home about August 1, 
for the election was to occur in the second week of that 
month, and this left him but ten days in which to push 
his claims for popular indorsement. His friends, how- 
ever, had been doing manful duty for him during his 
three months' absence, and he lost nothing in public 
estimation by his prompt enlistment to defend the fron- 
tier. Successive announcements in the "Journal" nac ^ 
by this time swelled the list of candidates to thirteen. 
But Sangamon County was entitled to only four rep- 
resentatives, and when the returns came in Lincoln was 
among those defeated. Nevertheless, he made a very 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

respectable showing in the race. The list of successful 
and unsuccessful aspirants and their votes was as fol- 
lows: 

E. D. Taylor 1127 

John T. Stuart 991 

Achilles Morris 945 

Peter Cartwright 815 

Under the plurality rule, these four had been elected. 
The unsuccessful candidates were: 

A. G. Herndon 806 

W. Carpenter 774 

J. Dawson 717 

A. Lincoln 657 

T. M. Neale 571 

R. Quinton 485 

Z. Peter 214 

E. Robinson 169 

Kirkpatrick 44 

The returns show that the total vote of the county 
was about twenty-one hundred and sixty-eight. Com- 
paring this with the vote cast for Lincoln, we see that 
he received nearly one third of the total county vote, 
notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwith- 
standing the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited 
to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithtsanding the 
sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness for ac- 
tive practical politics were demonstrated beyond ques- 
tion by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, 
which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and 
seventy-seven votes for him and only three against 
him. Three months later it gave one hundred and 
eighty-five for the Jackson and only seventy for the 



BLACKSMITH OR LAWYER? 35 

Clay electors, proving Lincoln's personal popularity. 
He remembered for the remainder of his life with great 
pride that this was the only time he was ever beaten on 
a direct vote of the people. 

The result of the election brought him to one of the 
serious crises of his life, which he forcibly stated in 
after years in the following written words : 

"He was now without means and out of business, but 
was anxious to remain with his friends, who had treated 
him with so much generosity, especially as he had noth- 
ing elsewhere to go to. He studied what he should do ; 
thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of 
trying to study law, rather thought he could not suc- 
ceed at that without a better education." 

The perplexing problem between inclination and 
means to follow it, the struggle between conscious tal- 
ent and the restraining fetters of poverty, has come to 
millions of young Americans before and since, but per- 
haps to none with a sharper trial of spirit or more reso- 
lute patience. Before he had definitely resolved upon 
either career, chance served not to solve, but to post- 
pone his difficulty, and in the end to greatly increase it. 

New Salem, which apparently never had any good 
reason for becoming a town, seems already at that time 
to have entered on the road to rapid decay. Offutt's 
speculations had failed, and he had disappeared. The 
brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found 
business dull and unpromising. Becoming tired of their 
undertaking, they offered to sell out to Lincoln and 
Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in pay- 
ment. The new partners, in that excess of hope which 
usually attends all new ventures, also bought two other 
similar establishments that were in extremity, and for 
these likewise gave their notes. It is evident that the 
confidence which Lincoln had inspired while he was 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a clerk in Offutt's store, and the enthusiastic support 
he had received as a candidate, were the basis of credit 
that sustained these several commercial transactions. 

It turned out in the long run that Lincoln's credit 
and the popular confidence that supported it were as 
valuable both to his creditors and himself as if the sums 
which stood over his signature had been gold coin in 
a solvent bank. But this transmutation was not at- 
tained until he had passed through a very furnace of 
financial embarrassment. Berry proved a worthless 
partner, and the business a sorry failure. Seeing this, 
Lincoln and Berry sold out again on credit — to the 
Trent brothers, who soon broke up and ran away. 
Berry also departed and died, and finally all the notes 
came back upon Lincoln for payment. He was unable 
to meet these obligations, but he did the next best thing. 
He remained, promised to pay when he could, and most 
of his creditors, maintaining their confidence in his in- 
tegrity, patiently bided their time, till, in the course 
of long years, he fully justified it by paying, with in- 
terest, every cent of what he learned to call, in humor- 
ous satire upon his own folly, the "national debt." 

With one of them he was not so fortunate. Van Ber- 
gen, who bought one of the Lincoln-Berry notes, ob- 
tained judgment, and, by peremptory sale, swept away 
the horse, saddle, and surveying instruments with the 
daily use of which Lincoln "procured bread and kept 
body and soul together," to use his own words. But 
here again Lincoln's recognized honesty was his safety. 
Out of personal friendship, James Short bought the 
property and restored it to the young surveyor, giving 
him time to repay. It was not until his return from 
Congress, seventeen years after the purchase of the 
store, that he finally relieved himself of the last instal- 
ments of his "national debt." But by these seventeen 



APPOINTED POSTMASTER 37 

years of sober industry, rigid economy, and unflinching 
faith to his obligations he earned the title of "Honest 
old Abe," which proved of greater service to himself 
and his country than if he had gained the wealth of 
Croesus. 

Out of this ill-starred commercial speculation, how- 
ever, Lincoln derived one incidental benefit, and it may 
be said it became the determining factor in his career. 
It is evident from his own language that he underwent 
a severe mental struggle in deciding whether he would 
become a blacksmith or a lawyer. In taking a middle 
course, and trying to become a merchant, he probably 
kept the latter choice strongly in view. It seems well 
established by local tradition that during the period 
while the Lincoln-Berry store was running its fore- 
doomed course from bad to worse, Lincoln employed 
all the time he could spare from his customers (and he 
probably had many leisure hours) in reading and study 
of various kinds. This habit was greatly stimulated 
and assisted by his being appointed, May 7, 1833, post- 
master at New Salem, which office he continued to hold 
until May 30, 1836. when Xew Salem partially disap- 
peared, and the office was removed to Petersburg. The 
influences which brought about the selection of Lincoln 
are not recorded, but it is suggested that he had acted 
for some time as deputy postmaster under the former 
incumbent, and thus became the natural successor. 
Evidently his politics formed no objection, as New 
Salem precinct had at the August election, when he 
ran as a Whig, given him its almost solid vote for rep- 
resentative, notwithstanding the fact that it was more 
than two thirds Democratic. The postmastership in- 
creased his public consideration and authority, broad- 
ened his business experience, and the newspapers he 
handled provided him an abundance of reading matter 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

on topics of both local and national importance up to 
the latest dates. 

Those were stirring times, even on the frontier. 
The "Sangamo Journal" of December 30, 1832, printed 
Jackson's nullification proclamation. The same paper, 
of March 9, 1833, contained an editorial on Clay's com- 
promise, and that of the 16th had a notice of the great 
nullification debate in Congress. The speeches of Clay, 
Calhoun, and Webster were published in full during the 
following month, and Mr. Lincoln could not well help 
reading them and joining in the feelings and com- 
ments they provoked. 

While the town of New Salem was locally dying, 
the county of Sangamon and the State of Illinois were 
having what is now called a boom. Other wide-awake 
newspapers, such as the "Missouri Republican" and 
"Louisville Journal," abounded in notices of the estab- 
lishment of new stage lines and the general rush of 
immigration. But the joyous dream of the New Salem- 
ites, that the Sangamon' River would become a com- 
mercial highway, quickly faded. The Talisman was 
obliged to hurry back down the rapidly falling stream, 
tearing away a portion of the famous dam to permit 
her departure. There were rumors that another 
steamer, the Sylph, would establish regular trips be- 
tween Springfield and Beardstown, but she never came. 
The freshets and floods of 1831 and 1832 were suc- 
ceeded by a series of dry seasons, and the navigation of 
the Sangamon River was never afterward a telling 
plank in the county platform of either political party. 



Ill 



Appointed Deputy Surveyor — Elected to Legislature in 
1834 — Campaign Issues — Begins Study of Lazv — In- 
ternal Improvement System — The Lincoln-Stone Pro- 
test — Candidate for Speaker in 1838 and 1840 

~^V7I [EN Lincoln was appointed postmaster, in May, 
W 1833, the Lincoln-Berry store had not yet com- 
pletely "winked out," to use his own picturesque phrase. 
When at length he ceased to be a merchant, he yet re- 
mained a government official, a man of consideration 
and authority, who still had a responsible occupation 
and definite home, where he could read, write, and 
study. The proceeds of his office were doubtless very 
meager, but in that day, when the rate of postage on 
letters was still twenty-five cents, a little change now 
and then came into his hands, which, in the scarcity 
of money prevailing on the frontier, had an importance 
difficult for us to appreciate. His positions as candi- 
date for the legislature and as postmaster probably had 
much to do in bringing him another piece of good for- 
tune. In the rapid settlement of Illinois and Sanga- 
mon County, and the obtaining titles to farms by pur- 
chase or preemption, as well as in the locating and 
opening of new roads, the county surveyor had more 
work on his hands than he could perform throughout 
a county extending forty miles east and west and fifty 
north and south, and was compelled to appoint depu- 
ties to assist him. The name of the county surveyor 
was John Calhoun, recognized by all his contempo- 
39 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

raries in Sangamon as a man of education and talent 
and an aspiring Democratic politician. It was not an 
easy matter for Calhoun to find properly qualified depu- 
ties, and when he became acquainted with Lincoln, and 
learned his attainments and aptitudes, and the estima- 
tion in which he was held by the people of New Salem, 
he wisely concluded to utilize his talents and standing, 
notwithstanding their difference in politics. The inci- 
dent is thus recorded by Lincoln : 

"The surveyor of Sangamon offered to depute to 
Abraham that portion of his work which was within 
his part of the county. He accepted, procured a com- 
pass and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a little, and 
went at it. This procured bread, and kept soul and 
body together." 

Tradition has it that Calhoun not only gave him 
the appointment, but lent him the book in which to 
study the art, which he accomplished in a period of six 
weeks, aided by the schoolmaster, Mentor Graham. 
The exact period of this increase in knowledge and 
business capacity is not recorded, but it must have taken 
place in the summer of 1833, as there exists a certifi- 
cate of survey in Lincoln's handwriting signed, "J. 
Calhoun, S. S. C, by A. Lincoln," dated January 14, 
1834. Before June of that year he had surveyed and 
located a public road from "Musick's Ferry on Salt 
Creek, via New Salem, to the county line in the direc- 
tion to Jacksonville," twenty-six miles and seventy 
chains in length, the exact course of which survey, with 
detailed bearings and distances, was drawn on common 
white letter-paper pasted in a long slip, to a scale of two 
inches to the mile, in ordinary yet clear and distinct 
penmanship. The compensation he received for this ser- 
vice was three dollars per day for five days, and two 
dollars and fifty cents for making the plat and report. 



DEPUTY SURVEYOR 41 

An advertisement in the "Journal" shows that the reg- 
ular fees of another deputy were "two dollars per day, 
or one dollar per lot of eight acres or less, and fifty 
cents for a single line, with ten cents per mile for 
traveling." 

While this class of work and his post-office, with its 
emoluments, probably amply supplied his board, lodg- 
ing, and clothing, it left him no surplus with which to 
pay his debts, for it was in the latter part of that same 
year (1834) that Van Bergen caused his horse and 
surveying instruments to be sold under the hammer, as 
already related. Meanwhile, amid these fluctuations 
of good and bad luck, Lincoln maintained his equa- 
nimity, his steady, persevering industry, and his hope- 
ful ambition and confidence in the future. Through 
all his misfortunes and his failures, he preserved his 
self-respect and his determination to succeed. 

Two years had nearly elapsed since he was defeated 
for the legislature, and, having received so flattering a 
vote on that occasion, it was entirely natural that he 
should determine to try a second chance. Four new 
representatives were to be chosen at the August elec- 
tion of 1834, and near the end of April Lincoln pub- 
lished his announcement that he would again be a can- ' 
didate. He could certainly view his expectations in 
every way in a more hopeful light. His knowledge 
had increased, his experience broadened, his acquain- 
tanceship greatly increased. His talents were acknow- 
ledged, his ability recognized. He was postmaster and 
deputy surveyor. He had become a public character 
whose services were in demand. As compared with 
the majority of his neighbors, he was a man of learn- 
ing who had seen the world. Greater, however, than 
all these advantages, his sympathetic kindness of heart, 
his sincere, open frankness, his sturdy, unshrinking 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

honesty, and that inborn sense of justice that yielded 
to no influence, made up a nobility of character and 
bearing that impressed the rude frontiersmen as much 
as, if not more quickly and deeply than, it would 
have done the most polished and erudite society. 

Beginning his campaign in April, he had three full 
months before him for electioneering, and he evidently 
used the time to good advantage. The pursuit of popu- 
larity probably consisted mainly of the same methods 
that in backwoods districts prevail even to our day : 
personal visits and solicitations, attendance at various 
kinds of neighborhood gatherings, such as raisings of 
new cabins, horse-races, shooting-matches, sales of 
town lots or of personal property under execution, or 
whatever occasion served to call a dozen or two of the 
settlers together. One recorded incident illustrates the 
practical nature of the politician's art at that day : 

"He [Lincoln] came to my house, near Island Grove, 
during harvest. There were some thirty men in the 
field. He got his dinner and went out in the field where 
the men were at work. I gave him an introduction, and 
the boys said that they could not vote for a man unless 
he could make a hand. 'Well, boys,' said he, 'if that is 
all, I am sure of your votes.' He took hold of the 
cradle, and led the way all the round with perfect ease. 
The boys were satisfied, and I don't think he lost a 
vote in the crowd." 

Sometimes two or more candidates would meet at 
such places, and short speeches be called for and given. 
Altogether, the campaign was livelier than that of two 
years before. Thirteen candidates were again contest- 
ing for the four seats in the legislature, to say nothing 
of candidates for governor, for Congress, and for the 
State Senate. The scope of discussion was enlarged 
and localized. From the published address of an indus- 



ELECTED TO LEGISLATURE 43 

trious aspirant who received only ninety-two votes, we 
learn that the issues now were the construction by the 
general government of a canal from Lake Michigan to 
the Illinois River, the improvement of the Sangamon 
River, the location of the State capital at Springfield, 
a United States bank, a better road law, and amend- 
ments to the estray laws. 

When the election returns came in Lincoln had rea- 
son to be satisfied with the efforts he had made. He 
received the second highest number of votes in the long 
list of candidates. Those cast for the representatives 
chosen stood: Dawson, 1390; Lincoln, 1376; Carpen- 
ter, 1 1 70; Stuart, 1 164. The location of the State 
capital had also been submitted to popular vote at this 
election. Springfield, being much nearer the geograph- 
ical center of the State, was anxious to deprive Van- 
dalia of that honor, and the activity of the Sangamon 
politicians proved it to be a dangerous rival. In the 
course of a month the returns from all parts of the 
State had come in, and showed that Springfield was 
third in the race. 

It must be frankly admitted that Lincoln's success 
at this juncture was one of the most important events 
of his life. A second defeat might have discouraged 
his efforts to lift himself to a professional career, and 
sent him to the anvil to make horseshoes and to iron 
wagons for the balance of his days. But this hand- 
some popular indorsement assured his standing and 
confirmed his credit. With this lift in the clouds of his 
horizon, he could resolutely carry his burden of debt 
and hopefully look to wider fields of public usefulness. 
Already, during the progress of the canvass, he had 
received cheering encouragement and promise of most 
valuable help. One of the four successful candidates 
was John T. Stuart, who had been major of volun- 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

teers in the Black Hawk War while Lincoln was cap- 
tain, and who, together with Lincoln, had reenlisted 
as a private in the Independent Spy Battalion. There 
is every likelihood that the two had begun a personal 
friendship during their military service, which was of 
course strongly cemented by their being fellow-candi- 
dates and both belonging to the Whig party. Mr. 
Lincoln relates : 

"Major John T. Stuart, then in full practice of the 
law [at Springfield], was also elected. During the 
canvass, in a private conversation he encouraged Abra- 
ham to study law. After the election, he borrowed 
books of Stuart, took them home with him, and 
went at it in good earnest. He studied with nobody. 
. . . In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law 
license, and on April 15, 1837, removed to Springfield 
and commenced the practice, his old friend Stuart tak- 
ing him into partnership." 

From and after this election in 1834 as a represen- 
tative, Lincoln was a permanent factor in the politics 
and the progress of Sangamon County. At a Spring- 
field meeting in the following November to promote 
common schools, he was appointed one of eleven dele- 
gates to attend a convention at Vandalia called to de- 
liberate on that subject. He was reelected to the legis- 
lature in 1836, in 1838, and in 1840, and thus for a 
period of eight years took a full share in shaping and 
enacting the public and private laws of Illinois, which 
in our day has become one of the leading States in the 
Mississippi valley. Of Lincoln's share in that legisla- 
tion, it need only be said that it was as intelligent and 
beneficial to the public interest as that of the best of his 
colleagues. The most serious error committed by the 
legislature of Illinois during that period was that it 
enacted laws setting on foot an extensive system of 



INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 45 

internal improvements, in the form of railroads and 
canals, altogether beyond the actual needs of trans- 
portation for the then existing population of the State, 
and the consequent reckless creation of a State debt for 
money borrowed at extravagant interest and liberal 
commissions. The State underwent a season of specula- 
tive intoxication, in which, by the promised and expected 
rush of immigration and the swelling currents of its 
business, its farms were suddenly to become villages, 
its villages spreading towns, and its towns transformed 
into great cities, while all its people were to be made 
rich by the increased value of their land and property. 
Both parties entered with equal recklessness into 
this ill-advised internal improvement system, which in 
the course of about four years brought the State to 
bankruptcy, with no substantial works to show for the 
foolishly expended millions. 

In voting for these measures, Mr. Lincoln repre- 
sented the public opinion and wisli of his county and 
the whole State ; and while he was as blamable, he was 
at the same time no more so than the wisest of his col- 
leagues. It must be remembered in extenuation that 
he was just beginning his parliamentary education. 
From the very first, however, he seems to have become 
a force in the legislature, and to have rendered special 
service to his constituents. It is conceded that the one 
object which Springfield and the most of Sangamon 
County had at heart was the removal of the capital 
from Vandalia to that place. This was accomplished 
in 1836, and the management of the measure appears 
to have been intrusted mainly to Mr. Lincoln. 

One incident of his legislative career stands out in 
such prominent relation to the great events of his after 
life that it deserves special explanation and emphasis. 
Even at that early date, a quarter of a century before 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the outbreak of the Civil War, the slavery question was 
now and then obtruding itself as an irritating and per- 
plexing element into the local legislation of almost 
every new State. Illinois, though guaranteed its free- 
dom by the Ordinance of 1787, nevertheless underwent 
a severe political struggle in which, about four years 
after her admission into the Union, politicians and set- 
tlers from the South made a determined effort to change 
her to a slave State. The legislature of 1822-23, with 
a two-thirds pro-slavery majority of the State Senate, 
and a technical, but legally questionable, two-thirds 
majority in the House, submitted to popular vote an 
act calling a State convention to change the constitu- 
tion. It happened, fortunately, that Governor Coles, 
though a Virginian, was strongly antislavery, and gave 
the weight of his official influence and his whole four 
years' salary to counteract the dangerous scheme. 
From the fact that southern Illinois up to that time 
was mostly peopled from the slave States, the result 
was seriously in doubt through an active and exciting 
campaign, and the convention was finally defeated by 
a majority of eighteen hundred in a total vote of eleven 
thousand six hundred and twelve. While this result 
effectually decided that Illinois would remain a free 
State, the propagandism and reorganization left a deep 
and tenacious undercurrent of pro-slavery opinion that 
for many years manifested itself in vehement and in- 
tolerant outcries against "abolitionism," which on one 
occasion caused the murder of Elijah P. Love joy for 
persisting in his right to print an antislavery newspaper 
at Alton. 

Nearly a year before this tragedy the Illinois legisla- 
ture had under consideration certain resolutions from 
the Eastern States on the subject of slavery, and the 
committee to which they had been referred reported a 



LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST 47 

set of resolves "highly disapproving abolition societies," 
holding that "the right of property in slaves is secured 
to the slaveholding States by the Federal Constitu- 
tion," together with other phraseology calculated on 
the whole to soothe and comfort pro-slavery sentiment. 
After much irritating discussion, the committee's reso- 
lutions were finally passed, with but Lincoln and 
five others voting in the negative. No record remains 
whether or not Lincoln joined in the debate; but, to 
leave no doubt upon his exact position and feeling, he 
and his colleague, Dan Stone, caused the following pro- 
test to be formally entered on the journals of the 
House : 

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery 
having passed both branches of the General Assembly 
at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest 
against the passage of the same. 

"They believe that the institution of slavery is 
founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the 
promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to in- 
crease than abate its evils. 

"They believe that the Congress of the United States 
has no power under the Constitution to interfere with 
the institution of slavery in the different States. 

"They believe that .the Congress of the United States 
has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish sla- 
very in the District of Columbia, but that the power 
ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the 
people of the District. 

"The difference between these opinions and those 
contained in the said resolutions is their reasons for 
entering this protest." 

In view of the great scope and quality of Lincoln's 
public service in after life, it would be a waste of time 
to trace out in detail his words or his votes upon the 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

multitude of questions on which he acted during this 
legislative career of eight years. It needs only to be 
remembered that it formed a varied and thorough 
school of parliamentary practice and experience that 
laid the broad foundation of that extraordinary skill 
and sagacity in statesmanship which he afterward dis- 
played in party controversy and executive direction. 
The quick proficiency and ready aptitude for leader- 
ship evidenced by him in this, as it may be called, his 
preliminary parliamentary school are strikingly proved 
by the fact that the Whig members of the Illinois House 
of Representatives gave him their full party vote 
for Speaker, both in 1838 and 1840. But being in a 
minority, they could not, of course, elect him. 



IV 



Law Practice — Rules for a Lawyer — Law and Politics: 
Twin Occupations — The Springfield Coterie — Friendly 
Help — Anne Rutledge — Mary Owens 

LINCOLN'S removal from New Salem to Spring- 
_j field and his entrance into a law partnership with 
Major John T. Stuart begin a distinctively new period 
in his career. From this point we need not trace in 
detail his progress in his new and this time deliberately 
chosen vocation. The lawyer who works his way up in 
professional merit from a five-dollar fee in a suit before 
a justice of the peace to a five-thousand-dollar fee be- 
fore the Supreme Court of his State has a long and diffi- 
cult path to climb. Mr. Lincoln climbed this path for 
twenty-five years with industry, perseverance, patience. 
— above all. with that sense of moral responsibility that 
always clearly traced the dividing line between his duty 
to his client and his duty to society and truth. His 
unqualified frankness of statement assured him the con- 
fidence of judge and jury in every argument. His habit 
of fully admitting the weak points in his case gained 
their close attention to its strong ones, and when clients 
brought him bad cases, his uniform advice was not to 
begin the suit. Among his miscellaneous writings 
there exist some fragments of autograph notes, evi- 
dently intended for a little lecture or talk to law stu- 
dents, which set forth with brevity and force his opin- 
ion of what a lawyer ought to be and do. He earnestly 
commends diligence in study, and, next to diligence, 
promptness in keeping up his work. 
49 



So ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"As a general rule, never take your whole fee in ad- 
vance," he says, "nor any more than a small retainer. 
When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a com- 
mon mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case 
as if something was still in prospect for you as well 
as for your client." "Extemporaneous speaking 
should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer's 
avenue to the public. However able and faithful he 
may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him 
business if he cannot make a speech. And yet, there 
is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying 
too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare 
powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the 
drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance. 
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to 
compromise whenever you can. Point out to them 
how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, 
expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the 
lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. 
There will still be business enough. Never stir up liti- 
gation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one 
who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than 
he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in 
search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife and 
put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be 
infused into the profession which should drive such 
men out of it." "There is a vague popular belief that 
lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague because 
when we consider to what extent confidence and honors 
are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the peo- 
ple, it appears improbable that their impression of dis- 
honesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression 
is common — almost universal. Let no young man 
choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to 
the popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events ; 



LAW AND POLITICS 51 

and if, in your own judgment, you cannot be an hon- 
est lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. 
Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the 
choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a 
knave." 

While Lincoln thus became a lawyer, he did not cease 
to remain a politician. In the early West, law and poli- 
tics were parallel roads to usefulness as well as distinc- 
tion. Newspapers had not then reached any consider- 
able circulation. There existed neither fast presses 
to print them, mail routes to carry them, nor subscribers 
to read them. Since even the laws had to be newly 
framed for those new communities, the lawyer became 
the inevitable political instructor and guide as far as 
ability and fame extended. His reputation as a lawyer 
was a twin of his influence as an orator, whether 
through logic or eloquence. Local conditions fostered, 
almost necessitated, this double pursuit. Westward emi- 
gration was in its full tide, and population was pouring 
into the great State of Illinois with ever accelerating 
rapidity. Settlements were spreading, roads were being 
opened, towns laid out, the larger counties divided 
and new ones organized, and the enthusiastic visions 
of coming prosperity threw the State into that fever 
of speculation which culminated in wholesale internal 
improvements on borrowed capital and brought col- 
lapse, stagnation, and bankruptcy in its inevitable train. 
As already said, these swift changes required a plenti- 
ful supply of new laws, to frame which lawyers were 
in a large proportion sent to the legislature every two 
years. These same lawyers also filled the bar and re- 
cruited the bench of the new 7 State, and, as they fol- 
lowed the itinerant circuit courts from county to 
county in their various sections, were called upon in 
these summer wanderings to explain in public speeches 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

their legislative work of the winter. By a natural con- 
nection, this also involved a discussion of national and 
party issues. It was also during this period that party 
activity was stimulated by the general adoption of the 
new system of party caucuses and party conventions 
to which President Jackson had given the impulse. 

In the American system of representative govern- 
ment, elections not only occur with the regularity of 
clockwork, but pervade the whole organism in every 
degree of its structure from top to bottom — Federal, 
State, county, township, and school district. In Illi- 
nois, even the State judiciary has at different times 
been chosen by popular ballot. The function of the 
politician, therefore, is one of continuous watchfulness 
and activity, and he must have intimate knowledge of 
details if he would work out grand results. Activity 
in politics also produces eager competition and sharp 
rivalry. In 1839 the seat of government was definitely 
transferred from Vandalia to Springfield, and there 
soon gathered at the new State capital a group of young 
men whose varied ability and future success in public 
service has rarely been excelled — Douglas, Shields, Cal- 
houn, Stuart, Logan, Baker, Treat, Hardin, Trumbull, 
McClernand, Browning, McDougall, and others. 

His new surroundings greatly stimulated and rein- 
forced Mr. Lincoln's growing experience and spread- 
ing acquaintance, giving him a larger share and wider 
influence in local and State politics. He became a val- 
ued and sagacious adviser in party caucuses, and a 
power in party conventions. Gradually, also, his gifts 
as an attractive and persuasive campaign speaker were 
making themselves felt and appreciated. 

His removal, in April, 1837, from a village of twenty 
houses to a "city" of about two thousand inhabitants 
placed him in striking new relations and necessities as 



FRIENDLY HELP 53 

to dress, manners, and society, as well as politics; 
yet here again, as in the case of his removal from his 
father's cabin to New Salem six years before, peculiar 
conditions rendered the transition less abrupt than 
would at first appear. Springfield, notwithstand- 
ing its greater population and prospective dignity 
as the capital, was in many respects no great improve- 
ment on New Salem. It had no public buildings, its 
streets and sidewalks were unpaved, its stores, in spite 
of all their flourish of advertisements, were stagger- 
ing under the hard times of 1837-39, and stagna- 
tion of business imposed a rigid economy on all classes. 
If we may credit tradition, this was one of the most 
serious crises of Lincoln's life. His intimate friend, 
William Butler, related to the writer that, having at- 
tended a session of the legislature at Vandalia, he and 
Lincoln returned together at its close to Springfield by 
the usual mode of horseback travel. At one of their 
stopping-places over night Lincoln, in one of his gloomy 
moods, told Butler the story of the almost hopeless 
prospects which lay immediately before him — that the 
session was over, his salary all drawn, and his money 
all spent; that he had no resources and no work; that 
he did not know where to turn to earn even a week's 
board. Butler bade him be of good cheer, and, without 
any formal proposition or agreement, took him and his 
belongings to his own house and domesticated him there 
as a permanent guest, with Lincoln's tacit compliance 
rather than any definite consent. Later Lincoln shared 
a room and genial companionship, which ripened into 
closest intimacy, in the store of his friend Joshua F. 
Speed, all without charge or expense; and these bro- 
therly offerings helped the young lawyer over present 
necessities which might otherwise have driven him to 
muscular handiwork at weekly or monthly wages. 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

From this time onward, in daily conversation, in ar- 
gument at the bar, in political consultation and discus- 
sion, Lincoln's life gradually broadened into contact 
with the leading professional minds of the growing 
State of Illinois. The man who could not pay a week's 
board bill was twice more elected to the legislature, was 
invited to public banquets and toasted by name, became 
a popular speaker, moved in the best society of the 
new capital, and made what was considered a brilliant 
marriage. 

Lincoln's stature and strength, his intelligence and 
ambition — in short, all the elements which gave him 
popularity among men in New Salem, rendered him 
equally attractive to the fair sex of that village. On the 
other hand, his youth, his frank sincerity, his longing 
for sympathy and encouragement, made him peculiarly 
sensitive to the society and influence of women. Soon 
after coming to New Salem he chanced much in the 
society of Miss Anne Rutledge, a slender, blue-eyed 
blonde, nineteen years old, moderately educated, beau- 
tiful according to local standards — an altogether lovely, 
tender-hearted, universally admired, and generally fas- 
cinating girl. From the personal descriptions of her 
which tradition has preserved, the inference is natu- 
rally drawn that her temperament and disposition were 
very much akin to those of Mr. Lincoln himself. It 
is little wonder, therefore, that he fell in love with her. 
But two years before she had become engaged to a Mr. 
McNamar, who had gone to the East to settle certain 
family affairs, and whose absence became so unac- 
countably prolonged that Anne finally despaired of his 
return, and in time betrothed herself to Lincoln. A 
year or so after this event Anne Rutledge was taken 
sick and died — the neighbors said of a broken heart, 
but the doctor called it brain fever, and his science 



MARY OWENS 55 

was more likely to be correct than their psychology. 
Whatever may have been the truth upon this point, the 
incident threw Lincoln into profound grief, and a pe- 
riod of melancholy so absorbing as to cause his friends 
apprehension for his own health. Gradually, however, 
their studied and devoted companionship won him back 
to cheerfulness, and his second affair of the heart as- 
sumed altogether different characteristics, most of 
which may be gathered from his own letters. 

Two years before the death of Anne Rutledge, Mr. 
Lincoln had seen and made the acquaintance of Miss 
Mary Owens, who had come to visit her sister Mrs. 
Able, and had passed about four weeks in New Salem, 
after which she returned to Kentucky. Three years 
later, and perhaps a year after Miss Rutledge's death, 
Mrs. Able, before starting for Kentucky, told Mr. Lin- 
coln, probably more in jest than earnest, that she would 
bring her sister back with her on condition that he 
would become her — Mrs. Abie's — brother-in-law. Lin- 
coln, also probably more in jest than earnest, promptly 
agreed to the proposition ; for he remembered Mary 
Owens as a tall, handsome, dark-haired girl, with fair 
skin and large blue eyes, who in conversation could be 
intellectual and serious as well as jovial and witty, 
who had a liberal education, and was considered weal- 
thy — one of those well-poised, steady characters who 
look upon matrimony and life with practical views and 
social matronly instincts. 

The bantering offer was made and accepted in the 
autumn of 1836, and in the following April Mr. Lin- 
coln removed to Springfield. Before this occurred, 
however, he was surprised to learn that Mary Owens 
had actually returned with her sister from Kentucky, 
and felt that the romantic jest had become a serious 
and practical question. Their first interview dissipated 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

some of the illusions in which each had indulged. The 
three years elapsed since they first met had greatly 
changed her personal appearance. She had become 
stout; her twenty-eight years (one year more than his) 
had somewhat hardened the lines of her face. Both in 
figure and feature she presented a disappointing con- 
trast to the slim and not yet totally forgotten Anne 
Rutledge. 

On her part, it was more than likely that she did not 
find in him all the attractions her sister had pictured. 
The speech and manners of the Illinois frontier lacked 
much of the chivalric attentions and flattering com- 
pliments to which the Kentucky beaux were addicted. 
He was yet a diamond in the rough, and she would not 
immediately decide till she could better understand his 
character and prospects, so no formal engagement re- 
sulted. 

In December, Lincoln went to his legislative duties 
at Vandalia, and in the following April took up his 
permanent abode in Springfield. Such a separation was 
not favorable to rapid courtship, yet they had occasional 
interviews and exchanged occasional letters. None 
of hers to him have been preserved, and only three of 
his to her. From these it appears that they sometimes 
discussed their affair in a cold, hypothetical way, even 
down to problems of housekeeping, in the light of mere 
worldly prudence, much as if they were guardians ar- 
ranging a manage de convenance, rather than impul- 
sive and ardent lovers wandering in Arcady. Without 
Miss Owens's letters it is impossible to know what she 
may have said to him, but in May, 1837, Lincoln wrote 
to her : 

"I am often thinking of what we said about your 
coming to live at Springfield. I am afraid you would 
not be satisfied. There is a great deal of flourishing 



MARY OWENS 57 

about in carriages here, which it would be your doom 
to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor, 
without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you be- 
lieve you could bear that patiently ? Whatever woman 
may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it 
is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy 
and contented ; and there is nothing I can imagine that 
would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. 
I know I should be much happier with you than the 
way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in 
you. What you have said to me may have been in the 
way of jest, or I may have misunderstood it. If so, 
then let it be forgotten; if otherwise, I much wish you 
would think seriously before you decide. What I have 
said I will most positively abide by, provided you wish 
it. My opinion is that you had better not do it. You 
have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be 
more severe than you now imagine. I know you are 
capable of thinking correctly on any subject, and if 
you deliberate maturely upon this before you decide, 
then I am willing to abide your decision." 

Whether, after receiving this, she wrote him the 
"good long letter" he asked for in the same epistle is 
not known. Apparently they did not meet again until 
August, and the interview must have been marked by 
reserve and coolness on both sides, which left each more 
uncertain than before; for on the same day Lincoln 
again wrote her, and, after saying that she might per- 
haps be mistaken in regard to his real feelings toward 
her, continued thus : 

"I want in all cases to do right, and most particu- 
larly so in all cases with women. I want at this par- 
ticular time, more than anything else, to do right with 
you; and if I knew it would be doing right, as I rather 
suspect it would, to let you alone, I would do it. And 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

for the purpose of making the matter as plain as pos- 
sible, I now say that you can now drop the subject, dis- 
miss your thoughts (if you ever had any) from me for- 
ever, and leave this letter unanswered, without calling 
forth one accusing murmur from me. And I will even 
go further, and say that if it will add anything to your 
comfort or peace of mind to do so, it is my sincere wish 
that you should. Do not understand by this that I wish 
to cut your acquaintance. I mean no such thing. 
What I do wish is that our further acquaintance shall 
depend upon yourself. If such further acquaintance 
would contribute nothing to your happiness, I am sure 
it would not to mine. If you feel yourself in any de- 
gree bound to me, I am now willing to release you, 
provided you wish it; while, on the other hand, I am 
willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I can 
be convinced that it will in any considerable degree add 
to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole question 
with me." 

All that we know of the sequel is contained in a let- 
ter which Lincoln wrote to his friend Mrs. Browning 
nearly a year later, after Miss Owens had finally re- 
turned to Kentucky, in which, without mentioning the 
lady's name, he gave a seriocomic description of what 
might be called a courtship to escape matrimony. He 
dwells on his disappointment at her changed appear- 
ance, and continues : 

"But what could I do? I had told her sister that I 
would take her for better or for worse, and I made a 
point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to 
my word, especially if others had been induced to act 
on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had ; for I 
was now fairly convinced that no other man on earth 
would have her, and hence the conclusion that they 
were bent on holding me to my bargain. 'Well,' 



MARY OWENS 59 

thought I, 'I have said it, and, be the consequences 
what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do 
it.' . . . All this while, although I was fixed 'firm 
as the surge-repelling rock' in my resolution, I found 
I was continually repenting the rashness which had 
led me to make it. Through life I have been in no 
bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thraldom 
of which I so much desired to be free. . . . After 
I had delayed the matter as long as I thought I could 
in honor do (which, by the way, had brought me round 
into last fall), I concluded I might as well bring it to 
a consummation without further delay, and so I mus- 
tered my resolution and made the proposal to her direct ; 
but, shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I 
supposed she did it through an affectation of modesty, 
which 1 thought but ill became her under the peculiar 
circumstances of her case, but on my renewal of the 
charge I found she repelled it with greater firmness 
than before. I tried it again and again, but with the 
same success, or rather with the same want of success. 
I finally was forced to give it up. at which 1 very unex- 
pectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endur- 
ance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred 
different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by 
the reflection that I had so long been too stupid to dis- 
cover her intentions, and at the same time never doubt- 
ing that I understood them perfectly; and also that she, 
whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would 
have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied 
greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first 
time began to suspect that 1 was really a little in love 
with her." 

The serious side of this letter is undoubtedly genuine 
and candid, while the somewhat over-exaggeration of 
the comic side points as clearly that he had not fully 



60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

recovered from the mental suffering he had undergone 
in the long conflict between doubt and duty. From the 
beginning, the match-making zeal of the sister had 
placed the parties in a false position, produced embar- 
rassment, and created distrust. A different beginning 
might have resulted in a very different outcome, for 
Lincoln, while objecting to her corpulency, acknow- 
ledges that in both feature and intellect she was as at- 
tractive as any woman he had ever met ; and Miss 
Owens's letters, written after his death, state that her 
principal objection lay in the fact that his training had 
been different from hers, and that "Mr. Lincoln was 
deficient in those little links which make up the chain 
of a woman's happiness." She adds: "The last mes- 
sage I ever received from him was about a year after 
we parted in Illinois. Mrs. Able visited Kentucky, and 
he said to her in Springfield, 'Tell your sister that I 
think she was a great fool because she did not stay here 
and marry me.' " She was even then not quite clear 
in her own mind but that his words were true. 



Springfield Society — Miss Mary Todd — Lincoln's En- 
gagement — His Deep Despondency — Visit to Ken- 
tucky—Letters to Speed— The Shields Duel— Marriage 
— Law Partnership with Logan — Hardin Nominated 
for Congress, 1843— Baker Nominated for Congress, 
1844 — Lincoln Nominated and Elected, 1846 

THE deep impression which the Mary Owens affair 
made upon Lincoln is further shown by one of 
the concluding phrases of his letter to Mrs. Browning : 
"I have now come to the conclusion never again to 
think of marrying." .But it was not long before a reac- 
tion set in from this pessimistic mood. The actual 
transfer of the seat of government from Vandalia to 
Springfield in 1839 gave the new capital fresh anima- 
tion. Business revived, public improvements were be- 
gun, politics ran high. Already there was a spirit in 
the air that in the following year culminated in the 
extraordinary enthusiasm and fervor of the Harrison 
presidential campaign of 1840, that rollicking and up- 
roarious party carnival of humor and satire, of song 
and jollification, of hard cider and log cabins. While 
the State of Illinois was strongly Democratic, Sanga- 
mon County was as distinctly Whig, and the local 
party disputes were hot and aggressive. The Whig 
delegation of Sangamon in the legislature, popularly 
called the "Long Nine," because the sum of the stature 
of its members was fifty-four feet, became noted for 
its influence in legislation in a body where the majority 
61 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was against them ; and of these Mr. Lincoln was the 
"tallest" both in person and ability, as was recognized 
by his twice receiving the minority vote for Speaker 
of the House. 

Society also began organizing itself upon metropoli- 
tan rather than provincial assumptions. As yet, how- 
ever, society was liberal. Men of either wealth or po- 
sition were still too few to fill its ranks. Energy, ambi- 
tion, talent, were necessarily the standard of admis- 
sion ; and Lincoln, though poor as a church mouse, was 
as welcome as those who could wear ruffled shirts and 
carry gold watches. The meetings of the legislature at 
Springfield then first brought together that splendid 
group of young men of genius whose phenomenal ca- 
reers and distinguished services have given Illinois 
fame in the history of the nation. It is a marked pe- 
culiarity of the American character that the bitterest 
foes in party warfare generally meet each other on 
terms of perfect social courtesy in the drawing-rooms 
of society; and future presidential candidates, cabinet 
members, senators, congressmen, jurists, orators, and 
battle heroes lent the little social reunions of Spring- 
field a zest and exaltation never found — perhaps impos- 
sible — amid the heavy, oppressive surroundings of 
conventional ceremony, gorgeous upholstery, and mag- 
nificent decorations. 

It was at this period also that Lincoln began to feel 
and exercise his expanding influence and powers as a 
writer and speaker. Already, two years earlier, he 
had written and delivered before the Young Men's 
Lyceum of Springfield an able address upon "The Per- 
petuation of Our Political Institutions," strongly en- 
forcing the doctrine of rigid obedience to law. In 
December, 1839, Douglas, in a heated conversation, 
challenged the young Whigs present to a political dis- 



MISS MARY TODD 63 

cussion. The challenge was immediately taken up, and 
the public of Springfield listened with eager interest to 
several nights of sharp debate between Whig and Dem- 
ocratic champions, in which Lincoln bore a prominent 
and successful share. In the following summer, Lin- 
coln's name was placed upon the Harrison electoral 
ticket for Illinois, and he lent all his zeal and eloquence 
to swell the general popular enthusiasm for "Tippe- 
canoe and Tyler too." 

In the midst of this political and social awakening 
of the new capital and the quickened interest and high 
hopes of leading citizens gathered there from all parts 
of the State, there came into the Springfield circles 
Miss Mary Todd of Kentucky, twenty-one years old, 
handsome, accomplished, vivacious, witty, a dashing 
and fascinating figure in dress and conversation, gra- 
cious and imperious by turns. She easily singled out 
and secured the admiration of such of the Springfield 
beaux as most pleased her somewhat capricious fancy. 
She was a sister of Mrs. Xinian W. Edwards, whose 
husband was one of the "Long Nine." This circum- 
stance made Lincoln a frequent visitor at the Edwards 
house; and, being thus much thrown in her company, 
he found himself, almost before he knew it, entangled 
in a new love affair, and in the course of a twelvemonth 
engaged to marry her. 

Much to the surprise of Springfield society, however, 
the courtship took a sudden turn. Whether it was 
caprice or jealousy, a new attachment, or mature re- 
flection will always remain a mystery. Every such 
case is a law unto itself, and neither science nor poetry 
is ever able to analyze and explain its causes and 
effects. The conflicting stories then current, and the 
varying traditions that yet exist, either fail to agree or 
to fit the sparse facts which came to light. There re- 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mains no dispute, however, that the occurrence, what- 
ever shape it took, threw Mr. Lincoln into a deeper 
despondency than any he had yet experienced, for on 
January 23, 1 841, he wrote to his law partner, John T. 
Stuart : 

"For not giving you a general summary of news 
you must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. 
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I 
feel were equally distributed to the whole human fam- 
ily, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. 
Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell ; I awfully 
forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible ; 
I must die or be better." 

Apparently his engagement to Miss Todd was broken 
off, but whether that was the result or the cause of his 
period of gloom seems still a matter of conjecture. 
His mind was so perturbed that he felt unable to attend 
the sessions of the legislature of which he was a mem- 
ber; and after its close his intimate friend Joshua F. 
Speed carried him off for a visit to Kentucky. The 
change of scene and surroundings proved of great bene- 
fit. He returned home about midsummer very much 
improved, but not yet completely restored to a natural 
mental equipoise. While on their visit to Kentucky, 
Speed had likewise fallen in love, and in the following 
winter had become afflicted with doubts and perplex- 
ities akin to those from which Lincoln had suffered. 
It now became his turn to give sympathy and counsel 
to his friend, and he did this with a warmth and deli- 
cacy born of his own spiritual trials, not yet entirely 
overmastered. He wrote letter after letter to Speed 
to convince him that his doubts about not truly loving 
the woman of his choice were all nonsense. 

"Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you 
might not wish her death, you would most certainly 



LETTERS TO SPEED 65 

be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a 
question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon 
it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you 
must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered 
on that point, and how tender I am upon it. . . . 
I am now fully convinced that you love her as ardently 
as you are capable of loving. . . . It is the pecu- 
liar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams 
of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can 
realize." 

When Lincoln heard that Speed was finally married, 
he wrote him : 

"It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to 
hear you say you are 'far happier than you ever ex- 
pected to be.' That much, I know, is enough. I know 
you too well to suppose your expectations were not, 
at least, sometimes extravagant; and if the reality ex- 
ceeds them all, I say, Enough, dear Lord. I am not 
going beyond the truth when I tell you that the short 
space it took me to read your last letter gave me more 
pleasure than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since 
the fatal first of January, 1841. Since then it seems to 
me I should have been entirely happy, but for the never- 
absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have 
contributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I 
cannot but reproach myself for even wishing to be 
happy while she is otherwise." 

It is quite possible that a series of incidents that 
occurred during the summer in which the above was 
written had something to do with bringing such a frame 
of mind to a happier conclusion. James Shields, after- 
ward a general in two wars and a senator from two 
States, was at that time auditor of Illinois, with his 
office at Springfield. Shields was an Irishman by 
birth, and, for an active politician of the Democratic 
5 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

party, had the misfortune to be both sensitive and iras- 
cible in party warfare. Shields, together with the 
Democratic governor and treasurer, issued a circular 
order forbidding the payment of taxes in the depre- 
ciated paper of the Illinois State banks, and the Whigs 
were endeavoring to make capital by charging that 
the order was issued for the purpose of bringing enough 
silver into the treasury to pay the salaries of these 
officials. Using this as a basis of argument, a couple 
of clever Springfield society girls wrote and printed 
in the "Sangamo Journal" a series of humorous let- 
ters in country dialect, purporting to come from the 
"Lost Townships," and signed by "Aunt Rebecca," 
who called herself a farmer's widow. It is hardly ne- 
cessary to say that Mary Todd was one of the culprits. 
The young ladies originated the scheme more to poke 
fun at the personal weaknesses of Shields than for the 
sake of party effect, and they embellished their simu- 
lated plaint about taxes with an embroidery of fictitious 
social happenings and personal allusions to the auditor 
that put the town on a grin and Shields into fury. 
The fair and mischievous writers found it necessary 
to consult Lincoln about how they should frame the 
political features of their attack, and he set them a pat- 
tern by writing the first letter of the series himself. 

Shields sent a friend to the editor of the "Journal," 
and demanded the name of the real "Rebecca." The 
editor, as in duty bound, asked Lincoln what he should 
do, and was instructed to give Lincoln's name, and 
not to mention the ladies. Then followed a letter from 
Shields to Lincoln demanding retraction and apology, 
Lincoln's reply that he declined to answer under men- 
ace, and a challenge from Shields. Thereupon Lin- 
coln instructed his "friend" as follows: If former 
offensive correspondence were withdrawn and a polite 



THE SHIELDS DUEL 67 

and gentlemanly inquiry made, he was willing to ex- 
plain that : 

"I did write the 'Lost Townships' letter which ap- 
peared in the 'Journal' of the 2d instant, but had no 
participation in any form in any other article alluding 
to you. I wrote that wholly for political effect; I had 
no intention of injuring your personal or private char- 
acter or standing as a man or a gentleman ; and I did 
not then think, and do not now think, that that article 
could produce or has produced that effect against you, 
and had I anticipated such an effect I would have for- 
borne to write it. And I will add that your conduct 
toward me, so far as I know, had always been gentle- 
manly, and that I had no personal pique against you 
and no cause for any. ... If nothing like this is 
done, the preliminaries of the fight are to be : 

"First. Weapons : Cavalry broadswords of the larg- 
est size, precisely equal in all respects, and such as now 
used by the cavalry company at Jacksonville. 

''Second. Position : A plank ten feet long, and from 
nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge, 
on the ground, as the line between us, which neither 
is to pass his foot over upon forfeit of his life. Next, 
a line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank 
and parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole 
length of the sword and three feet additional from the 
plank, and the passing of his own such line by either 
party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of 
the contest." 

The two seconds met, and, with great unction, pledged 
"our honor to each other that we would endeavor to set- 
tle the matter amicably," but persistently higgled over 
points till publicity and arrests seemed imminent. Pro- 
curing the necessary broadswords, all parties then hur- 
ried away to an island in the Mississippi River opposite 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Alton, where, long before the planks were set on edge 
or the swords drawn, mutual friends took the case out 
of the hands of the seconds and declared an adjustment. 
The terms of the fight as written by Mr. Lincoln show 
plainly enough that in his judgment it was to be treated 
as a farce, and would never proceed beyond "prelimi- 
naries." There, of course, ensued the usual very belli- 
cose after-discussion in the newspapers, with additional 
challenges between the seconds about the proper eti- 
quette of such farces, all resulting only in the shedding 
of much ink and furnishing Springfield with topics of 
lively conversation for a month. These occurrences, 
naturally enough, again drew Mr. Lincoln and Miss 
Todd together in friendly interviews, and Lincoln's 
letter to Speed detailing the news of the duels contains 
this significant paragraph : 

"But I began this letter not for what I have been 
writing, but to say something on that subject which 
you know to be of such infinite solicitude to me. The 
immense sufferings you endured from the first days 
of September till the middle of February you never tried 
to conceal from me, and I well understood. You have 
now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight 
months. That you are happier now than the day you 
married her I well know, for without you could not be 
living. But I have your word for it too, and the re- 
turning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your 
letters. But I want to ask a close question. 'Are you 
now in feeling as well as judgment glad that you are 
married as you are?' From anybody but me this 
would be an impudent question not to be tolerated, but 
I know you will pardon it in me. Please answer it 
quickly, as I am impatient to know." 

The answer was evidently satisfactory, for on No- 
vember 4, 1842, the Rev. Charles Dresser united Abra- 



MARRIAGE 69 

ham Lincoln and Mary Todd in the holy bonds of 
matrimony. 1 

His marriage to Miss Todd ended all those mental 
perplexities and periods of despondency from which he 
had suffered more or less during his several love af- 
fairs, extending over nearly a decade. Out of the 
keen anguish he had endured, he finally gained that 
perfect mastery over his own spirit which Scripture 
declares to denote a greatness superior to that of him 
who takes a city. Few men have ever attained that 
complete domination of the will over the emotions, of 
reason over passion, by which he was able in the years 
to come to meet and solve the tremendous questions 
destiny had in store for him. His wedding once over, 
he took up with resolute patience the hard, practical 
routine of daily life, in which he had already been so 
severely schooled. Even his sentimental correspon- 
dence with his friend Speed lapsed into neglect. He 
was so poor that he and his bride could not make the 
contemplated visit to Kentucky they would both have 
so much enjoyed. His "national debt" of the old New 
Salem days was not yet fully paid off. "We are not 
keeping house, but boarding at the Globe tavern," he 
writes. "Our room . . . and boarding only cost 
us four dollars a week." 

His law partnership with Stuart had lasted four 
years, but was dissolved by reason of Stuart's election 



1 The following children were Lincoln, in Springfield, July 16, 

born of this marriage: 1882. 

Robert Todd, August I, 1843; Robert, who filled the office of 

Edward Baker, March 10, 1846; Secretary of War with distinction 

William Wallace, December 21, under the administrations of Presi- 

1850; Thomas, April 4, 1853. dents Garfield and Arthur, as well 

Edward died in infancy ; William as that of minister to England 

in the White House, February 20, under the administration of Presi- 

1862; Thomas in Chicago, July dent Harrison, now resides in Chi- 

15, 1871; and the mother, Mary cago, Illinois. 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to Congress, and a new one was formed with Judge 
Stephen T. Logan, who had recently resigned from the 
circuit bench, where he had learned the quality and 
promise of Lincoln's talents. It was an opportune and 
important change. Stuart had devoted himself mainly 
to politics, while with Logan law was the primary ob- 
ject. Under Logan's guidance and encouragement, he 
took up both the study and practical work of the pro- 
fession in a more serious spirit. Lincoln's interest in 
politics, however, was in no way diminished, and, in 
truth, his limited practice at that date easily afforded 
him the time necessary for both. 

Since 1840 he had declined a reelection to the legis- 
lature, and his ambition had doubtless contributed 
much to this decision. His late law partner, Stuart, 
had been three times a candidate for Congress. He 
was defeated in 1836, but successfully gained his elec- 
tion in 1838 and 1840, his service of two terms ex- 
tending from December 2, 1839, to March 3, 1843. 
For some reason, the next election had been postponed 
from the year 1842 to 1843. ^ was but natural that 
Stuart's success should excite a similar desire in Lin- 
coln, who had reached equal party prominence, and 
rendered even more conspicuous party service. Lin- 
coln had profited greatly by the companionship and 
friendly emulation of the many talented young poli- 
ticians of Springfield, but this same condition also in- 
creased competition and stimulated rivalry. Not only 
himself, but both Hardin and Baker desired the nomi- 
nation, which, as the district then stood, was equivalent 
to an election. 

When the leading Whigs of Sangamon County met, 
Lincoln was under the impression that it was Baker 
and not Hardin who was his most dangerous rival, 
as appears in a letter to Speed of March 24, 1843 : 



CONGRESSIONAL NOMINATIONS 71 

"We had a meeting of the Whigs of the county here 
on last Monday to appoint delegates to a district con- 
vention, and Baker beat me and got the delegation in- 
structed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of my 
attempt to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates, 
so that in getting Baker the nomination I shall be fixed 
a good deal like a fellow who is made groomsman to a 
man that has cut him out and is marrying his own dear 

'gal.' " 

The causes that led to his disappointment are set forth 
more in detail in a letter, two days later, to a friend 
in the new county of Menard, which now included 
his old home, New Salem, whose powerful assistance 
was therefore lost from the party councils of Sanga- 
mon. The letter also dwells more particularly on the 
complicated influences which the practical politician 
has to reckon with, and shows that even his marriage 
had been used to turn popular opinion against him. 

"It is truly gratifying to me to learn that while the 
people of Sangamon have cast me off, my old friends 
of Menard, who have known me longest and best, stick- 
to me. It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citi- 
zens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, 
penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per 
month) have been put down here as the candidate of 
pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction. Yet 
so, chiefly, it was. There was, too, the strangest com- 
bination of church influence against me. Baker is a 
Campbellite, and therefore, as I suppose, with few ex- 
ceptions, got all that church. My wife has some rela- 
tions in the Presbyterian churches and some with the 
Episcopal churches ; and therefore, wherever it would 
tell, I was set down as either the one or the other, while 
it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought 
to go for me, because I belonged to no church, was 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fight- 
ing a duel. With all these things, Baker of course had 
nothing to do. Nor do I complain of them. As to his 
own church going for him, I think that was right 
enough, and as to the influences I have spoken of in 
the other, though they were very strong, it would be 
grossly untrue and unjust to charge that they acted 
upon them in a body, or were very near so. I only 
mean that those influences levied a tax of a considerable 
per cent, upon my strength throughout the religious 
community." 

In the same letter we have a striking illustration of 
Lincoln's intelligence and skill in the intricate details 
of political management, together with the high sense 
of honor and manliness which directed his action in 
such matters. Speaking of the influences of Menard 
County, he wrote : 

"If she and Mason act circumspectly, they will in the 
convention be able so far to enforce their rights as to 
decide absolutely which one of the candidates shall be 
successful. Let me show the reason of this. Hardin, 
or some other Morgan candidate, will get Putnam, 
Marshall, Woodford, Tazewell, and Logan [counties], 
making sixteen. Then you and Mason, having three, 
can give the victory to either side. You say you shall 
instruct your delegates for me, unless I object. I cer- 
tainly shall not object. That would be too pleasant a 
compliment for me to tread in the dust. And, besides, 
if anything should happen (which, however, is not 
probable) by which Baker should be thrown out of 
the fight, I would be at liberty to accept the nomina- 
tion if I could get it. I do, however, feel myself bound 
not to hinder him in any way from getting the nomi- 
nation. I should despise myself were I to attempt it. 
I think, then, it would be proper for your meeting to 



BAKER NOMINATED 73 

appoint three delegates, and to instruct them to go for 
some one as a first choice, some one else as a second, 
and perhaps some one as a third; and if in those in- 
structions I were named as the first choice it would 
gratify me very much. If you wish to hold the bal- 
ance of power, it is important for you to attend to and 
secure the vote of Mason also." 

A few weeks again changed the situation, of which 
he informed Speed in a letter dated May 18: 

"In relation to our Congress matter here, you were 
right in supposing I would support the nominee. Nei- 
ther Baker nor I, however, is the man — but Hardin, 
so far as I can judge from present appearances. We 
shall have no split or trouble about the matter; all will 
be harmony." 

In the following year (1844) Lincoln was once 
more compelled to exercise his patience. The Camp- 
bellite friends of Baker must have again been very ac- 
tive in behalf of their church favorite; for their influ- 
ence, added to his dashing politics and eloquent oratory, 
appears to have secured him the nomination without 
serious contention, while Lincoln found a partial rec- 
ompense in being nominated a candidate for presiden- 
tial elector, which furnished him opportunity for all 
his party energy and zeal during the spirited but un- 
successful presidential campaign for Henry Clay. He 
not only made an extensive canvass in Illinois, but also 
made a number of speeches in the adjoining State of 
Indiana. 

It was probably during that year that a tacit agree- 
ment was reached among the Whig leaders in Sanga- 
mon County, that each would be satisfied with one 
term in Congress and would not seek a second nomina- 
tion. But Hardin was the aspirant from the neighbor- 
ing county of Morgan, and apparently therefore not 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

included in this arrangement. Already, in the fall of 
1845, Lincoln industriously began his appeals and in- 
structions to his friends in the district to secure the 
succession. Thus he wrote on November 17: 

"The paper at Pekin has nominated Hardin for gov- 
ernor, and, commenting on this, the Alton paper indi- 
rectly nominated him for Congress. It would give 
Hardin a great start, and perhaps use me up, if the 
Whig papers of the district should nominate him for 
Congress. If your feelings toward me are the same as 
when I saw you (which I have no reason to doubt), 
I wish you would let nothing appear in your paper 
which may operate against me. You understand. 
Matters stand just as they did when I saw you. Baker 
is certainly off the track, and I fear Hardin intends to 
be on it." 

But again, as before, the spirit of absolute fairness 
governed all his movements, and he took special pains 
to guard against it being "suspected that I was attempt- 
ing to juggle Hardin out of a nomination for Congress 
by juggling him into one for governor." "I should 
be pleased," he wrote again in January, "if I could 
concur with you in the hope that my name would be 
the only one presented to the convention ; but I cannot. 
Hardin is a man of desperate energy and perseverance, 
and one that never backs out; and, I fear, to think 
otherwise is to be deceived in the character of our ad- 
versary. I would rejoice to be spared the labor of a 
contest, but, 'being in,' I shall go it thoroughly and to 
the bottom." He then goes on to recount in much 
detail the chances for and against him in the several 
counties of the district, and in later letters discusses 
the system of selecting candidates, where the conven- 
tion ought to be held, how the delegates should be 
chosen, the instructions they should receive, and how 



LINCOLN NOMINATED 75 

the places of absent delegates should be filled. He 
watched his field of operations, planned his strategy, 
and handled his forces almost with the vigilance of a 
military commander. As a result, he won both his 
nomination in May and his election to the Thirtieth 
Congress in August, 1846. 

In that same year the Mexican War broke out. 
Hardin became colonel of one of the three regiments 
of Illinois volunteers called for by President Polk, 
while Baker raised a fourth regiment, which was also 
accepted. Colonel Hardin was killed in the battle of 
Buena Vista, and Colonel Baker won great distinction 
in the fighting near the City of Mexico. 

Like Abraham Lincoln, Douglas was also elected to 
Congress in 1846, where he had already served the two 
preceding terms. But these redoubtable Illinois cham- 
pions were not to have a personal tilt in the House of 
Representatives. Before Congress met, the Illinois 
legislature elected Douglas to the United States Sen- 
tae for six years from March 4, 1847. 



VI 



First Session of the Thirtieth Congress — Mexican War 
— "Wilmot Proviso" — Campaign of 1848 — Letters to 
Herndon about Young Men in Politics — Speech in 
Congress on the Mexican War — Second Session of the 
Thirtieth Congress — Bill to Prohibit Slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia — Lincoln's Recommendations of Of- 
fice-Seekers — Letters to Speed — Commissioner of the 
General Land Office — Declines Governership of Oregon 

VERY few men are fortunate enough to gain dis- 
tinction during their first term in Congress. The 
reason is obvious. Legally, a term extends over two 
years ; practically, a session of five or six months dur- 
ing the first, and three months during the second year 
ordinarily reduce their opportunities more than one 
half. In those two sessions, even if we presuppose 
some knowledge of parliamentary law, they must learn 
the daily routine of business, make the acquaintance of 
their fellow-members, who already, in the Thirtieth 
Congress, numbered something over two hundred, 
study the past and prospective legislation on a multi- 
tude of minor national questions entirely new to the 
new members, and perform the drudgery of haunting 
the departments in the character of unpaid agent and 
attorney to attend to the private interests of constitu- 
ents — a physical task of no small proportions in Lin- 
coln's day, when there was neither street-car nor om- 
nibus in the "city of magnificent distances," as Wash- 
ington was nicknamed. Add to this that the principal 
76 



SERVICE IN CONGRESS 77 

work of preparing legislation is done by the various 
committees in their committee-rooms, of which the 
public hears nothing, and that members cannot choose 
their own time for making speeches ; still further, that 
the management of debate on prepared legislation must 
necessarily be intrusted to members of long experience 
as well as talent, and it will be seen that the novice 
need not expect immediate fame. 

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's 
single term in the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington added practically nothing to his reputation. He 
did not attempt to shine forth in debate by either a 
stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst 
of inspired eloquence. On the contrary, he took up his 
task as a quiet but earnest and patient apprentice in 
the great workshop of national legislation, and per- 
formed his share of duty with industry and intelligence, 
as well as with a modest and appreciative respect for 
the ability and experience of his seniors. 

"As to speechmakinq-." he wrote, "by way of getting 
the hang of the House, I made a little speech two or 
three days ago on a post-office question of no general 
interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere about the 
same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no 
worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to 
make one within a week or two in which I hope to suc- 
ceed well enough to wish you to see it." And again, 
some weeks later : "I just take my pen to say that Mr. 
Stephens of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced consump- 
tive man with a voice like Logan's, has just concluded 
the very best speech of an hour's length I ever heard. 
My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet." 

He was appointed the junior Whig member of the 
Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads, and shared 
its prosaic but eminently useful labors both in the com- 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mittee-room and the House debates. His name appears 
on only one other committee, — that on Expenditures of 
the War Department, — and he seems to have interested 
himself in certain amendments of the law relating to 
bounty lands for soldiers and such minor military top- 
ics. He looked carefully after the interests of Illinois 
in certain grants of land to that State for railroads, 
but expressed his desire that the government price of 
the reserved sections should not be increased to actual 
settlers. 

During the first session of the Thirtieth Congress he 
delivered three set speeches in the House, all of them 
carefully prepared and fully written out. The first 
of these, on January 12, 1848, was an elaborate defense 
of the Whig doctrine summarized in a House resolu- 
tion, passed a week or ten days before, that the Mexi- 
can War "had been unnecessarily and unconstitution- 
ally commenced by the President," James K. Polk. 
The speech is not a mere party diatribe, but a terse his- 
torical and legal examination of the origin of the Mexi- 
can War. In the after-light of our own times which 
shines upon these transactions, we may readily admit 
that Mr. Lincoln and the Whigs had the best of the 
argument, but it must be quite as readily conceded that 
they were far behind the President and his defenders 
in political and party strategy. The former were 
clearly wasting their time in discussing an abstract 
question of international law upon conditions existing 
twenty months before. During those twenty months 
the American arms had won victory after victory, and 
planted the American flag on the "halls of the Monte- 
zumas." Could even successful argument undo those 
victories or call back to life the brave American sol- 
diers who had shed their blood to win them ? 

It may be assumed as an axiom that Providence has 



"WILMOT PROVISO" 79 

never gifted any political party with all of political wis- 
dom or blinded it with all of political folly. Upon the 
foregoing point of controversy the Whigs were sadly 
thrown on the defensive, and labored heavily under 
their already discounted declamation. But instinct 
rather than sagacity led them to turn their eyes to the 
future, and successfully upon other points to retrieve 
their mistake. Within six weeks after Lincoln's speech 
President Polk sent to the Senate a treaty of peace, 
under which Mexico ceded to the United States an 
extent of territory equal in area to Germany, France, 
and Spain combined, and thereafter the origin of the 
war was an obsolete question. W r hat should be done 
with the new territory was now the issue. 

This issue embraced the already exciting slavery 
question, and Mr. Lincoln was doubtless gratified that 
the Whigs had taken a position upon it so consonant 
with his own convictions. Already, in the previous 
Congress, the body of the Whig members had joined 
a small group of anti slavery Democrats in fastening 
upon an appropriation bill the famous "Wilmot Pro- 
viso," that slavery should never exist in territory ac- 
quired from Mexico, and the Whigs of the Thirtieth 
Congress steadily followed the policy of voting for the 
same restriction in regard to every piece of legislation 
where it was applicable. Mr. Lincoln often said he 
had voted forty or fifty times for the Wilmot Proviso 
in various forms during his single term. 

Upon another point he and the other Whigs were 
equally wise. Repelling the Democratic charge that 
they were unpatriotic in denouncing the war, they voted 
in favor of every measure to sustain, supply, and en- 
courage the soldiers in the field. But their most adroit 
piece of strategy, now that the war was ended, was in 
their movement to make General Tavlor President. 



80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

In this movement Mr. Lincoln took a leading and 
active part. No living American statesman has ever 
been idolized by his party adherents as was Henry Clay 
for a whole generation, and Mr. Lincoln fully shared 
this hero-worship. But his practical campaigning as 
a candidate for presidential elector in the Harrison 
campaign of 1840, and the Clay campaign of 1844, 
in Illinois and the adjoining States, afforded him a 
basis for sound judgment, and convinced him that the 
day when Clay could have been elected President was 
forever passed. 

"Mr. Clay's chance for an election is just no chance 
at all," he wrote on April 30. "He might get New 
York, and that would have elected in 1844, but it will 
not now, because he must now, at the least, lose Tennes- 
see, which he had then, and in addition the fifteen new 
votes of Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin. . . . 
In my judgment, we can elect nobody but General Tay- 
lor; and we cannot elect him without a nomination. 
Therefore don't fail to send a delegate." And again on 
the same day : "Mr. Clay's letter has not advanced his 
interests any here. Several who were against Taylor, 
but not for anybody particularly before, are since tak- 
ing ground, some for Scott and some for McLean. 
Who will be nominated neither I nor any one else can 
tell. Now, let me pray to you in turn. My prayer is 
that you let nothing discourage or baffle you, but that, 
in spite of every difficulty, you send us a good Taylor 
delegate from your circuit. Make Baker, who is now 
with you, I suppose, help about it. He is a good hand 
to raise a breeze." 

In due time Mr. Lincoln's sagacity and earnestness 
were both justified ; for on June 12 he was able to write 
to an Illinois friend : 

"On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been 



CAMPAIGN OF 1848 81 

attending the nomination of 'Old Rough,' I found your 
letter in a mass of others which had accumulated in my 
absence. By many, and often, it had been said they 
would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since 
the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and 
in my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming, 
glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all 
the odds and ends are with us — Barnburners, Native 
Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Lo- 
cofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if 
in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. 
Some of the sanguine men have set down all the States 
as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful. 
Cannot something be done even in Illinois? Taylor's 
nomination takes the Locos on the blind side. It turns 
the war-thunder against them. The war is now to 
them the gallows of Hainan, which they built for us, 
and on which they are doomed to be hanged them- 
selves." 

Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the ob- 
vious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to 
nominate candidates. Something must also be done to 
elect them. Two of the letters which he at this time 
wrote home to his young law partner, William H. 
Herndon, are especially worth quoting in part, not 
alone to show his own zeal and industry, but also as a 
perennial instruction and encouragement to young men 
who have an ambition to make a name and a place for 
themselves in American politics: 

"Last night I was attending a sort of caucus of the 
Whig members, held in relation to the coming presi- 
dential election. The whole field of the nation was 
scanned, and all is high hope and confidence. . . . 
Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be 
brought forward by the older men. For instance, do 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if 
I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by 
older men? You young men get together and form 
a 'Rough and Ready Club,' and have regular meetings 
and speeches. . . . Let every one play the part 
he can play best, — some speak, some sing, and all 
'holler.' Your meetings will be of evenings; the older 
men, and the women, will go to hear you ; so that it will 
not only contribute to the election of 'Old Zach,' but 
will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the 
intellectual faculties of all engaged." 

And in another letter, answering one from Herndon 
in which that young aspirant complains of having been 
neglected, he says : 

"The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to 
me; and I cannot but think there is some mistake in 
your impression of the motives of the old men. I sup- 
pose I am now one of the old men ; and I declare, on 
my veracity, which I think is good with you, that 
nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to 
learn that you and others of my young friends at home 
are doing battle in the contest, and endearing them- 
selves to the people, and taking a stand far above any 
I have been able to reach in their admiration. I cannot 
conceive that other old men feel differently. Of course 
I cannot demonstrate what I say ; but I was young once, 
and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. 
I hardly know what to say. The way for a young man 
to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never 
suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow 
me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did 
help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be 
ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down ; and 
they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be di- 
verted from its true channel to brood over the attempted 



SPEECHES IN CONGRESS 83 

injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not in- 
jured every person you have ever known to fall into it." 

Mr. Lincoln's interest in this presidential campaign 
did not expend itself merely in advice to others. YYe 
have his own written record that he also took an active 
part for the election of General Taylor after his nom- 
ination, speaking a few times in Maryland near Wash- 
ington, several times in Massachusetts, and canvassing 
quite fully his own district in Illinois. Before the 
session of Congress ended he also delivered two 
speeches in the House — one on the general subject of 
internal improvements, and the other the usual political 
campaign speech which members of Congress are in 
the habit of making to be printed for home circulation ; 
made up mainly of humorous and satirical criticism, 
favoring the election of General Taylor, and opposing 
the election of General Cass, the Democratic candidate. 
Even this production, however, is lighted up by a pas 
sage of impressive earnestness and eloquence, in which 
he explains and defends the attitude of the Whigs in 
denouncing the origin of the Mexican War: 

"If to say 'the war was unnecessarily and unconstitu- 
tionally commenced by the President,' be opposing the 
war. then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. 
Whenever they have spoken at all they have said this ; 
and they have said it on what has appeared good reason 
to them. The marching an army into the midst of a 
peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabi- 
tants away, leaving their growing crops and other 
property to destruction, to you may appear a perfectly 
amiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does 
not appear so to us. So to call such an act, to us ap- 
pears no other than a naked, impudent absurdity, and 
we speak of it accordingly. But if, when the war had be- 
gun, and had become the cause of the country, the giv- 



8 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing of our money and our blood, in common with yours, 
was support of the war, then it is not true that we have 
always opposed the war. With few individual excep- 
tions, you have constantly had our votes here for all 
the necessary supplies. And, more than this, you have 
had the services, the blood, and the lives of our politi- 
cal brethren in every trial and on every field. The 
beardless boy and the mature man, the humble and the 
distinguished — you have had them. Through suffer- 
ing and death, by disease and in battle, they have en- 
dured, and fought and fell with you. Clay and Web- 
ster each gave a son, never to be returned. From the 
State of my own residence, besides other worthy but 
less known Whig names, we sent Marshall, Morrison, 
Baker, and Hardin ; they all fought and one fell, and in 
the fall of that one we lost our best Whig man. Nor 
were the Whigs few in number or laggard in the day 
of danger. In that fearful, bloody, breathless struggle 
at Buena Vista, where each man's hard task was to beat 
back five foes or die himself, of the five high officers 
who perished, four were' Whigs. In speaking - of this, I 
mean no odious comparison between the lion-hearted 
Whigs and the Democrats who fought there. On 
other occasions, and among the lower officers and pri- 
vates on that occasion, I doubt not the proportion was 
different. I wish to do justice to all. I think of all 
those brave men as Americans, in whose proud fame, 
as an American, I, too, have a share. Many of them, 
WTiigs and Democrats, are my constituents and per- 
sonal friends; and I thank them — more than thank 
them — one and all, for the high, imperishable honor 
they have conferred on our common State." 

During the second session of the Thirtieth Congress 
Mr. Lincoln made no long speeches, but in addition to 
the usual routine work devolved on him by the com- 



SLAVERY AT WASHINGTON 85 

mittee of which he was a member, he busied himself in 
preparing a special measure which, because of its re- 
lation to the great events of his later life, needs to be 
particularly mentioned. Slavery existed in Maryland 
and Virginia when these States ceded the territory out 
of which the District of Columbia was formed. Since, 
by that cession, this land passed under the exclusive 
control of the Federal government, the "institution" 
within this ten miles square could no longer be de- 
fended by the plea of State sovereignty, and antislavery 
sentiment naturally demanded that it should cease. 
Pro-slavery statesmen, on the other hand, as persis- 
tently opposed its removal, partly as a matter of pride 
and political consistency, partly because it was a con- 
venience to Southern senators and members of Con- 
gress, when they came to Washington, to bring their 
family servants where the local laws afforded them the 
same security over their black chattels which existed at 
their homes. Mr. Lincoln, in his Peoria speech in 
1854, emphasized the sectional dispute with this vivid 
touch of local color: 

"The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive- 
slave law. The North clamored for the abolition of a 
peculiar species of slave trade in the District of Colum- 
bia, in connection with which, in view from the win- 
dows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where 
droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and 
finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves 
of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty years." 

Thus the question remained a minor but never ending 
bone of contention and point of irritation, and excited 
debate arose in the Thirtieth Congress over a House 
resolution that the Committee on the Judiciary be in- 
structed to report a bill as soon as practicable prohib- 
iting the slave trade in the District of Columbia. In 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

this situation of affairs, Mr. Lincoln conceived the fond 
hope that he might be able to present a plan of com- 
promise. He already entertained the idea which in 
later years during his presidency he urged upon both 
Congress and the border slave States, that the just and 
generous mode of getting rid of the barbarous insti- 
tution of slavery was by a system of compensated eman- 
cipation, giving freedom to the slave and a money 
indemnity to the owner. He therefore carefully framed 
a bill providing for the abolishment of slavery in the 
District upon the following principal conditions : 

First. That the law should be adopted by a popular 
vote in the District. 

Second. A temporary system of apprenticeship and 
gradual emancipation for children born of slave 
mothers after January i, 1850. 

Third. The government to pay full cash value for 
slaves voluntarily manumitted by their owners. 

Fourth. Prohibiting bringing slaves into the District, 
or selling them out of it. 

Fifth. Providing that government officers, citizens 
of slave States, might bring with them and take away 
again, their slave house-servants. 

Sixth. Leaving the existing fugitive-slave law in 
force. 

When Mr. Lincoln presented this amendment to the 
House, he said that he was authorized to state that of 
about fifteen of the leading citizens of the District of 
Columbia, to whom the proposition had been submitted, 
there was not one who did not approve the adoption of 
such a proposition. He did not wish to be misunder- 
stood. He did not know whether or not they would 
vote for this bill on the first Monday in April; but he 
repeated that out of fifteen persons to whom it had been 
submitted, he had authority to say that every one of 



OFFICE-SEEKERS 87 

them desired that some proposition like this should 
pass. 

While Mr. Lincoln did not so state to the House, 
it was well understood in intimate circles that the bill 
had the approval on the one hand of Mr. Seaton, the 
conservative mayor of Washington, and on the other 
hand of Mr. Giddings, the radical antislavery member 
of the House of Representatives. Notwithstanding 
the singular merit of the bill in reconciling such ex- 
tremes of opposing factions in its support, the temper 
of Congress had already become too hot to accept such 
a rational and practical solution, and Mr. Lincoln's 
wise proposition was not allowed to come to a vote. 

The triumphant election of General Taylor to the 
presidency in November. 1848. very soon devolved 
upon Mr. Lincoln the delicate and difficult duty of mak- 
ing recommendations to the incoming administration 
of persons suitable to be appointed to fill the various 
Federal offices in Illinois, as Colonel E. D. Baker and 
himself were the only Whigs elected to Congress from 
that State. In performing this duty, one of his leading 
characteristics, impartial honesty and absolute fairness 
to political friends and foes alike, stands out with note- 
worthy clearness. His term ended with General Tay- 
lor's inauguration, and he appears to have remained in 
Washington but a few days thereafter. Before leaving, 
he wrote to the new Secretary of the Treasury : 

"Colonel E. D. Baker and myself are the only Whig 
members of Congress from Illinois — I of the Thirtieth, 
and he of the Thirty-first. We have reason to think 
the Whigs of that State hold us responsible, to some ex- 
tent, for the appointments which may be made of our 
citizens. We do not know you personally, and our ef- 
forts to see you have, so far, been unavailing. I there- 
fore hope I am not obtrusive in saying in this way, for 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

him and myself, that when a citizen of Illinois is to be 
appointed, in your department, to an office, either in or 
out of the State, we most respectfully ask to be heard." 

On the following day, March 10, 1849, ne addressed 
to the Secretary of State his first formal recommenda- 
tion. It is remarkable from the fact that between the 
two Whig applicants whose papers are transmitted, he 
says rather less in favor of his own choice than of the 
opposing claimant. 

"Sir : There are several applicants for the office of 
United States Marshal for the District of Illinois, 
among the most prominent of whom are Benjamin 

Bond, Esq., of Carlyle, and Thomas, Esq., of 

Galena. Mr. Bond I know to be personally every way 
worthy of the office; and he is very numerously and 
most respectably recommended. His papers I send to 
you ; and I solicit for his claims a full and fair consid- 
eration. Having said this much, I add that in my in- 
dividual judgment the appointment of Mr. Thomas 
would be the better. 

"Your obedient servant, 

"A. Lincoln." 
(Indorsed on Mr. Bond's papers.) 

"In this and the accompanying envelop are the rec- 
ommendations of about two hundred good citizens, of 
all parts of Illinois, that Benjamin Bond be appointed 
marshal for that district. They include the names of 
nearly all our Whigs who now are, or have ever been, 
members of the State legislature, besides forty-six of 
the Democratic members of the present legislature, and 
many other good citizens. I add that from personal 
knowledge I consider Mr. Bond every way worthy of 
the office, and qualified to fill it. Holding the indi- 
vidual opinion that the appointment of a different gen- 
tleman would be better, I ask especial attention and 



OFFICE-SEEKERS 89 

consideration for his claims, and for the opinions ex- 
pressed in his favor by those over whom I can claim no 
superiority." 

There were but three other prominent Federal ap- 
pointments to be made in Mr. Lincoln's congressional 
district, and he waited until after his return home so 
that he might be better informed of the local opinion 
concerning them before making his recommendations. 
It was nearly a month after he left Washington before 
he sent his decision to the several departments at Wash- 
ington. The letter quoted below, relating to one of 
these appointments, is in substance almost identical with 
the others, and particularly refrains from expressing 
any opinion of his own for or against the policy of 
political removals. He also expressly explains that 
Colonel Baker, the other Whig representative, claims 
no voice in the appointment. 

"Dear Sir : I recommend that Walter Davis be ap- 
pointed Receiver of the Land Office at this place, when- 
ever there shall be a vacancy. I cannot say that Mr. 
Herndon, the present incumbent, has failed in the 
proper discharge of any of the duties of the office. He 
is a very warm partizan, and openly and actively op- 
posed to the election of General Taylor. I also under- 
stand that since General Taylor's election he has 
received a reappointment from Mr. Polk, his old com- 
mission not having expired. Whether this is true the 
records of the department will show. I may add that 
the Whigs here almost universally desire his removal." 

If Mr. Lincoln's presence in Washington during two 
sessions in Congress did not add materially to either his 
local or national fame, it was of incalculable benefit in 
other respects. It afforded him a close inspection of 
the complex machinery of the Federal government and 
its relation to that of the States, and enabled him to 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

notice both the easy routine and the occasional friction 
of their movements. It brought him into contact and, 
to some degree, intimate companionship with political 
leaders from all parts of the Union, and gave him the 
opportunity of joining in the caucus and the national 
convention that nominated General Taylor for Presi- 
dent. It broadened immensely the horizon of his ob- 
servation, and the sharp personal rivalries he noted at 
the center of the nation opened to him new lessons in 
the study of human nature. His quick intelligence 
acquired knowledge quite as, or even more, rapidly by 
process of logical intuition than by mere dry, laborious 
study ; and it was the inestimable experience of this sin- 
gle term in the Congress of the United States which 
prepared him for his coming, yet undreamed-of, re- 
sponsibilities, as fully as it would have done the ordi- 
nary man in a dozen. 

Mr. Lincoln had frankly acknowledged to his friend 
Speed, after his election in 1846, that "being elected 
to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends 
for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I 
expected." It has already been said that an agreement 
had been reached among the several Springfield aspir- 
ants, that they would limit their ambition to a single 
term, and take turns in securing and enjoying the 
coveted distinction; and Mr. Lincoln remained faithful 
to this agreement. When the time to prepare for the 
election of 1848 approached, he wrote to his law 
partner : 

"It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are 
some who desire that I should be reelected. I most 
heartily thank them for their kind partiality ; and I can 
say, as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that 
'personally I would not object' to a reelection, although 
I thought at the time, and still think, it would be quite 



THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE 91 

as well for me to return to the law at the end of a single 
term. I made the declaration that I would not be a 
candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly with 
others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep 
the district from going to the enemy, than for any cause 
personal to myself ; so that, if it should so happen that 
nobody else wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the 
people the right of sending me again. But to enter 
myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize 
any one so to enter me, is what my word and honor 
forbid." 

Judge Stephen T. Logan, his late law partner, was 
nominated for the place, and heartily supported not 
only by Mr. Lincoln, but also by the Whigs of the dis- 
trict. By this time, however, the politics of the dis- 
trict had undergone a change by reason of the heavy 
emigration to Illinois at that period, and Judge Logan 
was defeated. 

Mr. Lincoln's strict and sensitive adherence to his 
promises now brought him a disappointment which 
was one of those blessings in disguise so commonly 
deplored for the time being by the wisest and best. 
A number of the Western members of Congress had 
joined in a recommendation to President-elect Taylor to 
give Colonel E. D. Baker a place in his cabinet, a re- 
ward he richly deserved for his talents, his party ser- 
vice, and the military honor he had won in the Mexican 
War. When this application bore no fruit, the Whigs of 
Illinois, expecting at least some encouragement from 
the new administration, laid claim to a bureau appoint- 
ment, that of Commissioner of the General Land 
Office, in the new Department of the Interior, recently 
established. 

"I believe that, so far as the Whigs in Congress are 
concerned," wrote Lincoln to Speed twelve days before 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Taylor's inauguration, "I could have the General Land 
Office almost by common consent; but then Sweet 
and Don Morrison and Browning and Cyrus Edwards 
all want it, and what is worse, while I think I could 
easily take it myself, I fear I shall have trouble to get 
it for any other man in Illinois." 

Unselfishly yielding his own chances, he tried to in- 
duce the four Illinois candidates to come to a mutual 
agreement in favor of one of their own number. They 
were so tardy in settling their differences as to ex- 
cite his impatience, and he wrote to a Washington 
friend : 

"I learn from Washington that a man by the name of 
Butterfield will probably be appointed Commissioner 
of the General Land Office. This ought not to be. 
. . . Some kind friends think I ought to be an 
applicant, but I am for Mr. Edwards. Try to defeat 
Butterfield, and, in doing so, use Mr. Edwards, J. L. 
D. Morrison, or myself, whichever you can to best 
advantage." 

As the situation grew persistently worse, Mr. Lin- 
coln at length, about the first of June, himself became 
a formal applicant. But the delay resulting from his 
devotion to his friends had dissipated his chances. 
Butterfield received the appointment, and the defeat 
was aggravated when, a few months later, his unrelent- 
ing spirit of justice and fairness impelled him to write 
a letter defending Butterfield and the Secretary of the 
Interior from an attack by one of Lincoln's warm per- 
sonal but indiscreet friends in the Illinois legislature. 
It was, however, a fortunate escape. In the four suc- 
ceeding years Mr. Lincoln qualified himself for better 
things than the monotonous drudgery of an administra- 
tive bureau at Washington. It is probable that this 
defeat also enabled him more easily to pass by another 



GOVERNORSHIP OF OR*EGON 93 

temptation. The Taylor administration, realizing its 
ingratitude, at length, in September, offered him the 
governorship of the recently organized territory of 
Oregon ; but he replied : 

"On as much reflection as I have had time to give 
the subject, I cannot consent to accept it." 



VII 



Repeal of the Missouri Compromise — State Fair Debate 
— Peoria Debate — Trumbull Elected — Letter to Robin- 
son — The Know-N othings — Decatur Meeting — Bloom- 
ington Convention — Philadelphia Convention — Lin- 
coln's Vote for Vice-President — Fremont and Dayton 
— Lincoln's Campaign Speeches — Chicago Banquet 
Speech 

AFTER the expiration of his term in Congress Mr. 
il Lincoln applied himself with unremitting assi- 
duity to the practice of law, which the growth of the 
State in population, and the widening of his acquain- 
tanceship, no less than his own growth in experience 
and legal acumen, rendered ever more important and 
absorbing. 

"In 1854," he writes, "his profession had almost 
superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he 
had never been before." 

Not alone Mr. Lincoln, but, indeed, the whole nation, 
was so aroused — the Democratic party, and nearly the 
entire South, to force the passage of that repeal through 
Congress, and an alarmed majority, including even a 
considerable minority of the Democratic party in the 
North, to resist its passage. 

Mr. Lincoln, of course, shared the general indigna- 
tion of Northern sentiment that the whole of the re- 
maining Louisiana Territory, out of which six States, 
and the greater part of two more, have since been 

94 



FIREBRAND OF "REPEAL" 95 

organized and admitted to the Union, should be opened 
to the possible extension of slavery. But two points 
served specially to enlist his energy in the controversy. 
One was personal, in that Senator Douglas of Illinois, 
by whom the repeal was championed, and whose influ- 
ence as a free-State senator and powerful Democratic 
leader alone made the repeal possible, had been his 
personal antagonist in Illinois politics for almost twenty 
years. The other was moral, in that the new question 
involved the elemental principles of the American gov- 
ernment, the fundamental maxim of the Declaration 
of Independence, that all men are created equal. His 
intuitive logic needed no demonstration that bank, 
tariff, internal improvements, the Mexican War, and 
their related incidents, were questions of passing ex- 
pediency; but that this sudden reaction, needlessly 
grafted upon a routine statute to organize a new terri- 
tory, was the unmistakable herald of a coming struggle 
which might transform republican institutions. 

It was in January, 1854, that the accidents of a 
Senate debate threw into Congress and upon the coun- 
try the firebrand of the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise. The repeal was not consummated till the 
month of May; and from May until the autumn elec- 
tions the flame of acrimonious discussion ran over the 
whole country like a wild fire. There is no record that 
Mr. Lincoln took any public part in the discussion until 
the month of September, but it is very clear that he 
not only carefully watched its progress, but that he 
studied its phases of development, its historical origins, 
and its legal bearings with close industry, and gathered 
from party literature and legislative documents a har- 
vest of substantial facts and data, rather than the wordy 
campaign phrases and explosive epithets with which 
more impulsive students and speakers were content 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to produce their oratorical effects. Here we may again 
quote Mr. Lincoln's exact written statement of the 
manner in which he resumed his political activity : 

"In the autumn of that year [1854] he took the 
stump, with no broader practical aim or object than to 
secure, if possible, the reelection of Hon. Richard 
Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a 
more marked attention than they had ever before done. 
As the canvass proceeded he was drawn to different 
parts of the State, outside of Mr. Yates's district. 
He did not abandon the law, but gave his attention by 
turns to that and politics. The State Agricultural Fair 
was at Springfield that year, and Douglas was an- 
nounced to speak there." 

The new question had created great excitement and 
uncertainty in Illinois politics, and there were abundant 
signs that it was beginning to break up the organiza- 
tion of both the Whig and the Democratic parties. 
This feeling brought together at the State fair an un- 
usual number of local leaders from widely scattered 
counties, and almost spontaneously a sort of political 
tournament of speech-making broke out. In this Sen- 
ator Douglas, doubly conspicuous by his championship 
of the Nebraska Bill in Congress, was expected to play 
the leading part, while the opposition, by a common 
impulse, called upon Lincoln to answer him. Lincoln 
performed the task with such aptness and force, with 
such freshness of argument, illustrations from history, 
and citations from authorities, as secured him a decided 
oratorical triumph, and lifted him at a single bound to 
the leadership of the opposition to Douglas's propa- 
gandism. Two weeks later, Douglas and Lincoln met 
at Peoria in a similar debate, and on his return to 
Springfield Lincoln wrote out and printed his speech 
in full. 



THE PEORIA DEBATE 97 

The reader who carefully examines this speech will 
at once be impressed with the genius which immediately 
made Mr. Lincoln a power in American politics. His 
grasp of the subject is so comprehensive, his statement 
so clear, his reasoning so convincing, his language so 
strong and eloquent by turns, that the wonderful power 
he manifested in the discussions and debates of the six 
succeeding years does not surpass, but only amplifies 
this, his first examination of the whole brood of ques- 
tions relating to slavery precipitated upon the country 
by Douglas's repeal. After a searching history of the 
Missouri Compromise, he attacks the demoralizing ef- 
fects and portentous consequences of its repeal. 

"This declared indifference," he says, "but, as I must 
think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can- 
not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injus- 
tice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our 
republican example of its just influence in the world; 
enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibil- 
ity, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of 
freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because 
it forces so many good men among ourselves into an 
open war with the very fundamental principles of civil 
liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, 
and insisting that there is no right principle of action 
but self-interest. . . . Slavery is founded in the 
selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it in his love 
of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, 
and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery 
extension brings them, shocks and throes and convul- 
sions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri 
Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declar- 
ation of Independence, repeal all past history, you still 
cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abun- 
dance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, 



98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will 
continue to speak." 

With argument as impetuous, and logic as inexor- 
able, he disposes of Douglas's plea of popular sov- 
ereignty : 

"Here, or at Washington, I would not trouble my- 
self with the oyster laws of Virginia, or the cranberry 
laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is 
right — absolutely and eternally right — but it has no 
just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I 
should rather say, that whether it has such application 
depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If 
he is not a man, in that case, he who is a man may, as 
a matter of self-government, do just what he pleases 
with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that 
extent a total destruction of self-government to say 
that he too shall not govern himself? When the white 
man governs himself, that is self-government; but 
when he governs himself and also governs another man, 
that is more than self-government — that is despotism. 
. . . I particularly object to the new position which 
the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to 
slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it 
assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving 
of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous 
dalliance for a free people — a sad evidence that, feeling 
prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle, 
we have ceased to revere. . . . Little by little, 
but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been 
giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years 
ago we began by declaring that all men are created 
equal; but now, from that beginning, we have run 
down to the other declaration, that for some men to 
enslave others is a 'sacred right of self-government.' 
These principles cannot stand together. They are as 
opposite as God and Mammon." 



CANDIDATE FOR SENATE 99 

If one compares the serious tone of this speech with 
the hard cider and coon-skin buncombe of the Harrison 
campaign of 1840, and its lofty philosophical thought 
with the humorous declamation of the Taylor cam- 
paign of 1848, the speaker's advance in mental devel- 
opment at once becomes apparent. In this single effort 
Mr. Lincoln had risen from the class of the politician 
to the rank of the statesman. There is a well-founded 
tradition that Douglas, disconcerted and troubled by 
Lincoln's unexpected manifestation of power in the 
Springfield and Peoria debates, sought a friendly inter- 
view with his opponent, and obtained from him an 
agreement that neither one of them would make any 
further speeches before the election. 

The local interest in the campaign was greatly height- 
ened by the fact that the term of Douglas's Democratic 
colleague in the United States Senate was about to 
expire, and that the State legislature to be elected would 
have the choosing of his successor. It is not probable 
that Lincoln built much hope upon this coming politi- 
cal chance, as the Democratic party had been through- 
out the whole history of the State in decided political 
control. It turned out, nevertheless, that in the elec- 
tion held on November 7, an opposition majority of 
members of the legislature was chosen, and Lincoln 
became, to outward appearances, the most available 
opposition candidate. But party disintegration had 
been only partial. Lincoln and his party friends still 
called themselves Whigs, though they could muster 
only a minority of the total membership of the legisla- 
ture. The so-called Anti-Nebraska Democrats, oppos- 
ing Douglas and his followers, were still too full of 
traditional party prejudice to help elect a pronounced 
Whig to the United States Senate, though as strongly 
"Anti-Nebraska" as themselves. Five of them brought 
forward, and stubbornly voted for, Lyman Trumbull, 



ioo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

an Anti-Nebraska Democrat of ability, who had been 
chosen representative in Congress from the eighth 
Illinois District in the recent election. On the ninth 
ballot it became evident to Lincoln that there was dan- 
ger of a new Democratic candidate, neutral on the 
Nebraska question, being chosen. In this contingency, 
he manifested a personal generosity and political sagac- 
ity far above the comprehension of the ordinary smart 
politician. He advised and prevailed upon his Whig 
supporters to vote for Trumbull, and thus secure a vote 
in the United States Senate against slavery extension. 
He had rightly interpreted both statesmanship and 
human nature. His personal sacrifice on this occasion 
contributed essentially to the coming political regen- 
eration of his State; and the five Anti-Nebraska Dem- 
ocrats, who then wrought his defeat, became his most 
devoted personal followers and efficient allies in his 
own later political triumph, which adverse currents, 
however, were still to delay to a tantalizing degree. 
The circumstances of his defeat at that critical stage 
of his career must have seemed especially irritating, 
yet he preserved a most remarkable equanimity of tem- 
per. "I regret my defeat moderately," he wrote to a 
sympathizing friend, "but I am not nervous about it." 

We may fairly infer that while Mr. Lincoln was not 
"nervous," he was nevertheless deeply impressed by 
the circumstance as an illustration of the grave nature 
of the pending political controversy. A letter written 
by him about half a year later to a friend in Kentucky, 
is full of such serious reflection as to show that the 
existing political conditions in the United States had 
engaged his most profound thought and investigation. 

"That spirit," he wrote, "which desired the peaceful 
extinction of slavery has itself become extinct with the 
occasion and the men of the Revolution. Under the 



THE KNOW-NOTHINGS 101 

impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted 
systems of emancipation at once, and it is a significant 
fact that not a single State has done the like since. 
So far as peaceful voluntary emancipation is con- 
cerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, 
scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of a free 
mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the 
better as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. 
The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown 
and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than 
will our American masters voluntarily give up their 
slaves. Our political problem now is, 'Can we as a 
nation continue together permanently — forever — half 
slave and half free?' The problem is too mighty for 
me — may God. in his mercy, superintend the solution." 

Not quite three years later Mr. Lincoln made the 
concluding problem of this letter the text of a famous 
speech. On the day before his first inauguration as 
President of the United States, the "Autocrat of all 
the Russias," Alexander II, by imperial decree eman- 
cipated his serfs; while six weeks after the inaugura- 
tion, the "American masters," headed by Jefferson 
Davis, began the greatest war of modern times to per- 
petuate and spread the institution of slavery. 

The excitement produced by the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise in 1854, by the election forays of 
the Missouri Border Ruffians into Kansas in 1855, and 
by the succeeding civil strife in 1856 in that Territory, 
wrought an effective transformation of political parties 
in the Union, in preparation for the presidential election 
of that year. This transformation, though not seri- 
ously checked, was very considerably complicated by 
an entirely new faction, or rather by the sudden revival 
of an old one, which in the past had called itself Native 
Americanism, and now assumed the name of the Amer- 



102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ican Party, though it was more popularly known by the 
nickname of "Know-Nothings," because of its secret 
organization. It professed a certain hostility to for- 
eign-born voters and to the Catholic religion, and 
demanded a change in the naturalization laws from a 
five years' to a twenty-one years' preliminary residence. 
This faction had gained some sporadic successes in 
Eastern cities, but when its national convention met 
in February, 1856, to nominate candidates for Presi- 
dent and Vice-President, the pending slavery question, 
that it had hitherto studiously ignored, caused a dis- 
ruption of its organization; and though the adhering 
delegates nominated Millard Fillmore for President 
and A. J. Donelson for Vice-President, who remained 
in the field and were voted for, to some extent, in the 
presidential election, the organization was present only 
as a crippled and disturbing factor, and disappeared 
totally from politics in the following years. 

Both North and South, party lines adjusted them- 
selves defiantly upon the single issue, for or against 
men and measures representing the extension or re- 
striction of slavery. The Democratic party, though 
radically changing its constituent elements, retained 
the party name, and became the party of slavery exten- 
sion, having forced the repeal and supported the result- 
ing measures; while the Whig party entirely dis- 
appeared, its members in the Northern States joining 
the Anti-Nebraska Democrats in the formation of the 
new Republican party. Southern Whigs either went 
boldly into the Democratic camp, or followed for a 
while the delusive prospects of the Know-Nothings. 

This party change went on somewhat slowly in the 
State of Illinois, because that State extended in terri- 
torial length from the latitude of Massachusetts to that 
of Virginia, and its population contained an equally 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 103 

diverse local sentiment. The northern counties had at 
once become strongly Anti-Nebraska ; the conservative 
Whig counties of the center inclined to the Know- 
Nothings ; while the Kentuckians and Carolinians, who 
had settled the southern end, had strong antipathies 
to what they called abolitionism, and applauded Douglas 
and repeal. 

The agitation, however, swept on, and further hesi- 
tation became impossible. Early in 1856 Mr. Lincoln 
began to take an active part in organizing the Republi- 
can party. He attended a small gathering of Anti- 
Nebraska editors in February, at Decatur, who issued 
a call for a mass convention which met at Blooming- 
ton in May, at which the Republican party of Illinois 
was formally constituted by an enthusiastic gathering 
of local leaders who had formerly been bitter antago- 
nists, but who now joined their efforts to resist slavery 
extension. They formulated an emphatic but not 
radical platform, and through a committee selected a 
composite ticket of candidates for State offices, which 
the convention approved by acclamation. The occasion 
remains memorable because of the closing address made 
by Mr. Lincoln in one of his most impressive oratori- 
cal moods. So completely were his auditors carried 
away by the force of his denunciation of existing poli- 
tical evils, and by the eloquence of his appeal for har- 
mony and union to redress them, that neither a ver- 
batim report nor even an authentic abstract was made 
during its delivery: but the lifting inspiration of its 
periods will never fade from the memory of those who 
heard it. 

About three weeks later, the first national convention 
of the Republican party met at Philadelphia, and nom- 
inated John C. Fremont of California for President. 
There was a certain fitness in this selection, from the 



io4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

fact that he had been elected to the United States Sen- 
ate when California applied for admission as- a free 
State, and that the resistance of the South to her admis- 
sion had been the entering wedge of the slavery agita- 
tion of 1850. This, however, was in reality a minor 
consideration. It was rather his romantic fame as a 
daring Rocky Mountain explorer, appealing strongly 
to popular imagination and sympathy, which gave 
him prestige as a presidential candidate. 

It was at this point that the career of Abraham Lin- 
coln had a narrow and fortunate escape from a pre- 
mature and fatal prominence. The Illinois Bloom- 
ington convention had sent him as a delegate to the 
Philadelphia convention ; and, no doubt very unex- 
pectedly to himself, on the first ballot for a candidate 
for Vice-President he received one hundred and ten 
votes against two hundred and fifty-nine votes for Wil- 
liam L. Dayton of New Jersey, upon which the choice 
of Mr. Dayton was at once made unanimous. But the 
incident proves that Mr. Lincoln was already gaining 
a national fame among the advanced leaders of politi- 
cal thought. Happily, a mysterious Providence re- 
served him for larger and nobler uses. 

The nominations thus made at Philadelphia com- 
pleted the array for the presidential battle of 1856. 
The Democratic national convention had met at Cin- 
cinnati on June 2, and nominated James Buchanan for 
President and John C. Breckinridge for Vice-Presi- 
dent. Its work presented two points of noteworthy 
interest, namely: that the South, in an arrogant pro- 
slavery dictatorship, relentlessly cast aside the claims 
of Douglas and Pierce, who had effected the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, and nominated Bu- 
chanan, in apparently sure confidence of that super- 
serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obedi- 



CAMPAIGN SPEECHES 105 

ently rendered ; also, that in a platform of intolerable 
length there was such a cunning ambiguity of word 
and concealment of sense, such a double dealing of 
phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the 
pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some anti- 
slavery Democrats of the North might join for the 
last time to elect a "Northern man with Southern prin- 
ciples." 

Again, in this campaign, as in several former presi- 
dential elections, Mr. Lincoln was placed upon the 
electoral ticket of Illinois, and he made over fifty 
speeches in his own and adjoining States in behalf of 
Fremont and Dayton. Not one of these speeches was 
reported in full, but the few fragments which have been 
preserved show that he occupied no doubtful ground 
on the pending issues. Already the Democrats were 
raising the potent alarm cry that the Republican party 
was sectional, and that its success would dissolve the 
Union. Mr. Lincoln did not then dream that he would 
ever have to deal practically with such a contingency, 
but his mind was very clear as to the method of meet- 
ing it. Speaking for the Republican party, he said : 

"But the Union in any event will not be dissolved. 
We don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it, we 
won't let you. With the purse and sword, the army 
and navy and treasury, in our hands and at our com- 
mand, you could not do it. This government would be 
very weak, indeed, if a majority, with a disciplined 
army and navy and a well-filled treasury, could not 
preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undis- 
ciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about the 
dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. 
We do not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not." 

While the Republican party was much cast down 
by the election of Buchanan in November, the Demo- 



106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

crats found significant cause for apprehension in the 
unexpected strength with which the Fremont ticket 
had been supported in the free States. Especially was 
this true in Illinois, where the adherents of Fremont 
and Fillmore had formed a fusion, and thereby elected 
a Republican governor and State officers. One of the 
strong elements of Mr. Lincoln's leadership was the 
cheerful hope he was always able to inspire in his fol- 
lowers, and his abiding faith in the correct political 
instincts of popular majorities. This trait was happily 
exemplified in a speech he made at a Republican ban- 
quet in Chicago about a month after the presidential 
election. Recalling the pregnant fact that though Bu- 
chanan gained a majority of the electoral vote, he was 
in a minority of about four hundred thousand of the 
popular vote for President, Mr. Lincoln thus summed 
up the chances of Republican success in the future : 

"Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever 
can change public opinion, can change the government, 
practically, just so much. Public opinion on any sub- 
ject always has a 'central idea,' from which all its 
minor thoughts radiate. That 'central idea' in our po- 
litical public opinion at the beginning was, and until 
recently has continued to be, 'the equality of men.' And 
although it has always submitted patiently to whatever 
of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual 
necessity, its constant working has been a steady prog- 
ress towards the practical equality of all men. The late 
presidential election was a struggle by one party to 
discard that central idea and to substitute for it the 
opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract; 
the workings of which as a central idea may be the 
perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all 
countries and colors. . . . All of us who did 
not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a ma- 



CHICAGO BANQUET SPEECH 107 

jority of four hundred thousand. But in the late 
contest we were divided between Fremont and Fill- 
more. Can we not come together for the future ? Let 
every one who really believes, and is resolved, that free 
society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can 
conscientiously declare that in the past contest he has 
done only what he thought best — let every such one 
have charity to believe that every other one can say 
as much. Thus let bygones be bygones; let past dif- 
ferences as nothing be ; and with steady eye on the real 
issue, let us reinaugurate the good old 'central ideas' 
of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is 
with us ; God is with us. We shall again be able, not to 
declare that 'all States as States are equal,' nor yet that 
'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the 
broader, better declaration, including both these and 
much more, that 'all men are created equal.' " 



VIII 

Buchanan Elected President — The Dred Scott Decision 
— Douglas's Springfield Speech, 183/ — Lincoln's An- 
swering Speech — Criticism of Dred Scott Decision — 
Kansas Civil War — Buchanan Appoints Walker — 
Walker's Letter on Kansas — The Lecompton Constitu- 
tion — Revolt of Douglas 

THE election of 1856 once more restored the Dem- 
ocratic party to full political control in national 
affairs. James Buchanan was elected President to suc- 
ceed Pierce; the Senate continued, as before, to have 
a decided Democratic majority; and a clear Demo- 
cratic majority of twenty-five was chosen to the House 
of Representatives to succeed the heavy opposition 
majority of the previous Congress. 

Though the new House did not organize till a year 
after it was elected, the certainty of its coming action 
was sufficient not only to restore, but greatly to accel- 
erate the pro-slavery reaction begun by the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise. This impending drift of na- 
tional policy now received a powerful impetus by an 
act of the third coordinate branch, the judicial depart- 
ment of the government. 

Very unexpectedly to the public at large, the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, a few days after 
Buchanan's inauguration, announced its judgment in 
what quickly became famous as the Dred Scott deci- 
sion. Dred Scott, a negro slave in Missouri, sued for 
his freedom on the ground that his master had taken 
108 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION 109 

him to reside in the State of Illinois and the Territory 
of Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited by law. 
The question had been twice decided by Missouri 
courts, once for and then against Dred Scott's claim; 
and now the Supreme Court of the United States, after 
hearing the case twice elaborately argued by eminent 
counsel, finally decided that Dred Scott, being a negro, 
could not become a citizen, and therefore was not en- 
titled to bring suit. This branch, under ordinary pre- 
cedent, simply threw the case out of court ; but in 
addition, the decision, proceeding with what lawyers 
call obiter dictum , went on to declare that under the 
Constitution of the United States neither Congress nor 
a territorial legislature possessed power to prohibit 
slavery in Federal Territories. 

The whole country immediately flared up with the 
agitation of the slavery question in this new form. The 
South defended the decision with heat, the North pro- 
tested against it with indignation, and the controversy 
was greatly intensified by a phrase in the opinion of 
Chief Justice Taney, that at the time of the Declara- 
tion of Independence negroes were considered by gen- 
eral public opinion to be so far inferior "that they had 
no rights which the white man was bound to respect." 

This decision of the Supreme Court placed Senator 
Douglas in a curious dilemma. While it served to in- 
dorse and fortify his course in repealing the Missouri 
Compromise, it. on the other hand, totally negatived 
his theory by which he had sought to make the repeal 
palatable, that the people of a Territory, by the exercise 
of his great principle of popular sovereignty, could 
decide the slavery question for themselves. But, being 
a subtle sophist, he sought to maintain a show of con- 
sistency by an ingenious evasion. In the month of 
June following the decision, he made a speech at 



no ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Springfield, Illinois, in which he tentatively announced 
what in the next year became widely celebrated as his 
Freeport doctrine, and was immediately denounced 
by his political confreres of the South as serious party 
heterodoxy. First lauding the Supreme Court as "the 
highest judicial tribunal on earth," and declaring that 
violent resistance to its decrees must be put down by 
the strong arm of the government, he went on thus to 
define a master's right to his slave in Kansas : 

"While the right continues in full force under the 
guarantees of the Constitution, and cannot be divested 
or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily re- 
mains a barren and a worthless right unless sustained, 
protected, and enforced by appropriate police regula- 
tions and local legislation prescribing adequate reme- 
dies for its violation. These regulations and remedies 
must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and 
wishes of the people of the Territory, as they can only 
be prescribed by the local legislatures. Hence, the 
great principle of popular sovereignty and self-govern- 
ment is sustained and firmly established by the author- 
ity of this decision." 

Both the legal and political aspects of the new ques- 
tion immediately engaged the earnest attention of Mr. 
Lincoln; and his splendid power of analysis set its 
ominous portent in a strong light. He made a speech 
in reply to Douglas about two weeks after, subjecting 
the Dred Scott decision to a searching and eloquent 
criticism. He said : 

"That decision declares two propositions — first, 
that a negro cannot sue in the United States courts; 
and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery 
in the Territories. It was made by a divided court — 
dividing differently on the different points. Judge 
Douglas does not discuss the merits of the decision, 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION in 

and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing 
I could no more improve on McLean and Curtis than 
he could on Taney. . . . We think the Dred Scott 
decision was erroneous. We know the court that made 
it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall 
do what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no 
resistance to it. . . . If this important decision 
had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the 
judges, and without any apparent partizan bias, and in 
accordance with legal public expectation and with the 
steady practice of the departments throughout our his- 
tory, and had been in no part based on assumed his- 
torical facts which are not really true; or if, wanting 
in some of these, it had been before the court more than 
once, and had there been affirmed and reaffirmed 
through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps 
would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to 
acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, 
we find it wanting in all these claims to the public con- 
fidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not 
even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite 
established a settled doctrine for the country. . . . 
"The Chief Justice does not directly assert, but 
plainly assumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of 
the black man is more favorable now than it was in 
the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a mis- 
take. In some trifling particulars the condition of that 
race has been ameliorated ; but as a whole, in this 
country, the change between then and now is decidedly 
the other way ; and their ultimate destiny has never ap- 
peared so hopeless as in the last three or four years. 
In two of the five States — New Jersey and North Caro- 
lina — that then gave the free negro the right of voting, 
the right has since been taken away ; and in the third — 
New York — it has been greatly abridged ; while it has 



H2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

not been extended, so far as I know, to a single addi- 
tional State, though the number of the States has more 
than doubled. In those days, as I understand, masters 
could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; 
but since then such legal restraints have been made 
upon emancipation as to amount almost to prohibition. 
In those days, legislatures held the unquestioned power 
to abolish slavery in their respective States, but now it 
is becoming quite fashionable for State constitutions 
to withhold that power from the legislatures. In those 
days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's 
bondage to the new countries was prohibited, but now 
Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibi- 
tion, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not 
if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was held sacred by all, and thought to 
include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage 
of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed and 
sneered at and construed, and hawked at and torn, 
till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they 
could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth 
seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is 
after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the 
theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have 
him in his prison-house ; they have searched his person, 
and left no prying instrument with him. One after an- 
other, they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him ; 
and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a 
lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked 
without the concurrence of every key — the keys in the 
hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered 
to a hundred different and distant places; and they 
stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions 
of mind and matter, can be produced to make the im- 
possibility of his escape more complete than it is." 



KANSAS CIVIL WAR 113 

There is not room to quote the many other equally 
forcible points in Mr. Lincoln's speech. Our nar- 
rative must proceed to other significant events in the 
great pro-slavery reaction. Thus far the Kansas experi- 
ment had produced nothing but agitation, strife, and 
bloodshed. First the storm in Congress over repeal; 
then a mad rush of emigration to occupy the Territory. 
This was fbl lowed by the Border Ruffian invasions, 
in which Missouri voters elected a bogus territorial 
legislature, and the bogus legislature enacted a code 
of bogus laws. In turn, the more rapid emigration 
from free States filled the Territory with a majority 
of free-State voters, who quickly organized a compact 
free-State party, which sent a free-State constitution, 
known as the Topeka Constitution, to Congress, and 
applied for admission. This movement proved barren, 
because the two houses of Congress were divided in 
sentiment. Meanwhile, President Pierce recognized 
the bogus laws, and issued proclamations declaring the 
free-State movement illegal and insurrectionary; and 
the free-State party had in its turn baffled the enforce- 
ment of the bogus laws, partly by concerted action of 
nonconformity and neglect, partly by open defiance. 
The whole finally culminated in a chronic border 
war between Missouri raiders on one hand, and free- 
State guerrillas on the other; and it became necessary 
to send Federal troops to check the disorder. These 
were instructed by Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of 
War, that "rebellion must be crushed." The future 
Confederate President little suspected the tremendous 
prophetic import of his order. The most significant 
illustration of the underlying spirit of the struggle 
was that President Pierce had successively appointed 
three Democratic governors for the Territory, who, 
starting with pro-slavery bias, all became free-State 



ii 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

partizans, and were successively insulted and driven 
from the Territory by the pro-slavery faction when in 
manly protest they refused to carry out the behests of 
the Missouri conspiracy. After a three years' struggle 
neither faction had been successful, neither party was 
satisfied; and the administration of Pierce bequeathed 
to its successor the same old question embittered by 
rancor and defeat. 

President Buchanan began his administration with a 
boldly announced pro-slavery policy. In his inaugural 
address he invoked the popular acceptance of the Dred 
Scott decision, which he already knew was coming; 
and a few months later declared in a public letter that 
slavery "exists in Kansas under the Constitution of the 
United States. . . . How it ever could have been 
seriously doubted is a mystery." He chose for the 
governorship of Kansas, Robert J. Walker, a citizen 
of Mississippi of national fame and of pronounced pro- 
slavery views, who accepted his dangerous mission 
only upon condition that a new constitution, to be 
formed for that State, must be honestly submitted to 
the real voters of Kansas for adoption or rejection. 
President Buchanan and his advisers, as well as Sena- 
tor Douglas, accepted this condition repeatedly and em- 
phatically. But when the new governor went to the 
Territory, he soon became convinced, and reported to 
his chief, that to make a slave State of Kansas was a 
delusive hope. "Indeed," he wrote, "it is universally 
admitted here that the only real question is this: 
whether Kansas shall be a conservative, constitutional, 
Democratic, and ultimately free State, or whether it 
shall be a Republican and abolition State." 

As a compensation for the disappointment, however, 
he wrote later direct to the President: 

"But we must have a slave State out of the south- 



THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION 115 

western Indian Territory, and then a calm will follow ; 
Cuba be acquired with the acquiescence of the North; 
and your administration, having in reality settled the 
slavery question, be regarded in all time to come as 
a re-signing and re-sealing of the Constitution. . . . 
I shall be pleased soon to hear from you. Cuba ! Cuba ! 
(and Porto Rico, if possible) should be the counter- 
sign of your administration, and it will close in a blaze 
of glory." 

And the governor was doubtless much gratified to 
receive the President's unqualified indorsement in re- 
ply : "On the question of submitting the constitution 
to the bona fide resident settlers of Kansas, I am willing 
to stand or fall." 

The sequel to this heroic posturing of the chief 
magistrate is one of the most humiliating chapters in 
American politics. Attendant circumstances leave little 
doubt that a portion of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, in se- 
cret league and correspondence with the pro-slavery 
Missouri-Kansas cabal, aided and abetted the framing 
and adoption of what is known to history as the Le- 
compton Constitution, an organic instrument of a radi- 
cal pro-slavery type ; that its pretended submission to 
popular vote was under phraseology, and in combina- 
tion with such gigantic electoral frauds and dictatorial 
procedure, as to render the whole transaction a mockery 
of popular government ; still worse, that President Bu- 
chanan himself, proving too weak in insight and will to 
detect the intrigue or resist the influence of his malign 
counselors, abandoned his solemn pledges to Governor 
Walker, adopted the Lecompton Constitution as an ad- 
ministration measure, and recommended it to Congress 
in a special message, announcing dogmatically: "Kan- 
sas is therefore at this moment as much a slave State as 
Georgia or South Carolina." 



u6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The radical pro-slavery attitude thus assumed by 
President Buchanan and Southern leaders threw the 
Democratic party of the free States into serious dis- 
array, while upon Senator Douglas the blow fell with 
the force of party treachery — almost of personal in- 
dignity. The Dred Scott decision had rudely brushed 
aside his theory of popular sovereignty, and now the 
Lecompton Constitution proceedings brutally trampled 
it down in practice. The disaster overtook him, too, 
at a critical moment. His senatorial term was about 
to expire; the next Illinois legislature would elect his 
successor. The prospect was none too bright for him, 
for at the late presidential election Illinois had chosen 
Republican State officers. He was compelled either to 
break his pledges to the Democratic voters of Illinois, 
or to lead a revolt against President Buchanan and the 
Democratic leaders in Congress. Party disgrace at 
Washington, or popular disgrace in Illinois, were the 
alternatives before him. To lose his reelection to the 
Senate would almost certainly end his public career. 
When, therefore, Congress met in December, 1857, 
Douglas boldly attacked and denounced the Lecompton 
Constitution, even before the President had recom- 
mended it in his special message. 

"Stand by the doctrine," he said, "that leaves the 
people perfectly free to form and regulate their insti- 
tutions for themselves, in their own way, and your 
party will be united and irresistible in power. . . . 
If Kansas wants a slave-State constitution, she has a 
right to it; if she wants a free-State constitution, she 
has a right to it. It is none of my business which way 
the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is 
voted down or voted up. Do you suppose, after the 
pledges of my honor that I would go for that principle 
and leave the people to vote as they choose, that I 



REVOLT OF DOUGLAS 117 

would now degrade myself by voting one way if the 
slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it 
be voted up? I care not how that vote may stand. 
. . . Ignore Lecompton ; ignore Topeka ; treat both 
those party movements as irregular and void; pass a 
fair bill — the one that we framed ourselves when we 
were acting as a unit; have a fair election — and you 
will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace 
throughout the country, in ninety days. The people 
want a fair vote. They will never be satisfied with- 
out it. . . . But if this constitution is to be forced 
down our throats in violation of the fundamental prin- 
ciple of free government, under a mode of submission 
that is a mockery and insult. I will resist it to the last." 
Walker, the fourth Democratic governor who had 
now been sacrificed to the interests of the Kansas pro- 
slavery cabal, also wrote a sharp letter of resignation 
denouncing the Lecompton fraud and policy ; and such 
was the indignation aroused in the free States, that al- 
though the Senate passed the Lecompton Bill, twenty- 
two Northern Democrats joining their vote to that of 
the Republicans, the measure was defeated in the 
House of Representatives. The President and his 
Southern partizans bitterly resented this defeat; and 
the schism between them, on the one hand, and Douglas 
and his adherents, on the other, became permanent and 
irreconcilable. 



IX 



The Senatorial Contest in Illinois — "House Divided 
against Itself" Speech — The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 
— The Freeport Doctrine — Douglas Deposed from 
Chairmanship of Committee on Territories — Benjamin 
on Douglas — Lincoln's Popular Majority — Douglas 
Gains Legislature — Greeley, Crittenden, et al. — "The 
Fight Must Go On" — Douglas's Southern Speeches — 
Senator Brozvn's Questions — Lincoln's Warning against 
Popular Sovereignty — The War of Pamphlets — Lin- 
coln's Ohio Speeches — The John Brozvn Raid — Lin- 
coln's Comment 

THE hostility of the Buchanan administration to 
Douglas for his part in defeating the Lecompton 
Constitution, and the multiplying chances against him, 
served only to stimulate his followers in Illinois to 
greater efforts to secure his reelection. Precisely the 
same elements inspired the hope and increased the en- 
thusiasm of the Republicans of the State to accom- 
plish his defeat. For a candidate to oppose the "Little 
Giant," there could be no rival in the Republican ranks 
to Abraham Lincoln. He had in 1854 yielded his pri- 
ority of claim to Trumbull ; he alone had successfully 
encountered Douglas in debate. The political events 
themselves seemed to have selected and pitted these 
two champions against each other. Therefore, when 
the Illinois State convention on June 16, 1858, passed 
by acclamation a separate resolution, "That Abraham 
Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans 
118 



SENATORIAL CONTEST 119 

of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor 
of Stephen A. Douglas," it only recorded the well- 
known judgment of the party. After its routine work 
was finished, the convention adjourned to meet again 
in the hall of the State House at Springfield at eight 
o'clock in the evening. At that hour Mr. Lincoln ap- 
peared before the assembled delegates and delivered a 
carefully studied speech, which has become historic. 
After a few opening sentences, he uttered the following 
significant prediction : 

" 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I 
believe this government cannot endure permanently, 
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to 
be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I 
do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place 
it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it 
is in course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will 
push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all 
the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." 

Then followed his critical analysis of the legislative 
objects and consequences of the Nebraska Bill, and the 
judicial effects and doctrines of the Dred Scott deci- 
sion, with their attendant and related incidents. The 
first of these had opened all the national territory to 
slavery. The second established the constitutional in- 
terpretation that neither Congress nor a territorial 
legislature could exclude slavery from any United 
States territory. The President had declared Kansas 
to be already practically a slave State. Douglas had 
announced that he did not care whether slavery was 
voted down or voted up. Adding to these many other 
indications of current politics, Mr. Lincoln proceeded : 

"Put this and that together, and we have another 



120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with 
another Supreme Court decision declaring that the 
Constitution of the United States does not permit a 
State to exclude slavery from its limits. . . . 
Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being 
alike lawful in all the States. . . . We shall lie 
down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri 
are on the verge of making their State free, and we 
shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme 
Court has made Illinois a slave State." 

To avert this danger, Mr. Lincoln declared it was 
the duty of Republicans to overthrow both Douglas 
and the Buchanan political dynasty. 

"Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mus- 
tered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did 
this under the single impulse of resistance to a common 
danger, with every external circumstance against us. 
Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we 
gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought 
the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a 
disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we 
brave all then to falter now? — now, when that same 
enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The 
result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand 
firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate 
or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory 
is sure to come." 

Lincoln's speech excited the greatest interest every- 
where throughout the free States. The grave peril 
he so clearly pointed out came home to the people of the 
North almost with the force of a revelation ; and there- 
after their eyes were fixed upon the Illinois senatorial 
campaign with undivided attention. Another incident 
also drew to it the equal notice and interest of the poli- 
ticians of the slave States. 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 121 

Within a month from the date of Lincoln's speech, 
Douglas returned from Washington and began his 
campaign of active speech-making in Illinois. The 
fame he had acquired as the champion of the Nebraska 
Bill, and, more recently, the prominence into which 
his opposition to the Lecompton fraud had lifted him 
in Congress, attracted immense crowds to his meet- 
ings, and for a few days it seemed as if the mere con- 
tagion of popular enthusiasm would submerge all in- 
telligent political discussion. To counteract this, Mr. 
Lincoln, at the advice of his leading friends, sent him 
a letter challenging him to joint public debate. Doug- 
las accepted the challenge, but with evident hesitation ; 
and it was arranged that they should jointly address the 
same meetings at seven towns in the State, on dates 
extending through August, September, and October. 
The terms were, that, alternately, one should speak an 
hour in opening, the other an hour and a half in reply, 
and the first again have half an hour in closing. This 
placed the contestants upon an equal footing before 
their audiences. Douglas's senatorial prestige afforded 
him no advantage. Face to face with the partizans of 
both, gathered in immense numbers and alert with crit- 
ical and jealous watchfulness, there was no evading the 
square, cold, rigid test of skill in argument and truth 
in principle. The processions and banners, the music 
and fireworks, of both parties, were stilled and forgot- 
ten while the audience listened with high-strung nerves 
to the intellectual combat of three hours' duration. 

It would be impossible to give the scope and spirit 
of these famous debates in the space allotted to these 
pages, but one of the turning-points in the oratorical 
contest needs particular mention. Northern Illinois, 
peopled mostly from free States, and southern Illinois, 
peopled mostly from slave States, were radically op- 



122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

posed in sentiment on the slavery question; even the 
old Whigs of central Illinois had to a large extent 
joined the Democratic party, because of their ineradi- 
cable prejudice against what they stigmatized as "abo- 
litionism." To take advantage of this prejudice, 
Douglas, in his opening speech in the first debate at 
Ottawa in northern Illinois, propounded to Lincoln a 
series of questions designed to commit him to strong 
antislavery doctrines. He wanted to know whether 
Mr. Lincoln stood pledged to the repeal of the fugi- 
tive-slave law; against the admission of any more 
slave States ; to the abolition of slavery in the District 
of Columbia; to the prohibition of the slave trade 
between different States; to prohibit slavery in all the 
Territories ; to oppose the acquisition of any new terri- 
tory unless slavery were first prohibited therein. 

In their second joint debate at Freeport, Lincoln 
answered that he was pledged to none of these proposi- 
tions, except the prohibition of slavery in all Terri- 
tories of the United States. In turn he propounded 
four questions to Douglas, the second of which was : 

"Can the people of a United States Territory in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the 
United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to 
the formation of a State constitution?" 

Mr. Lincoln had long and carefully studied the im- 
port and effect of this interrogatory, and nearly a 
month before, in a private letter, accurately foreshad- 
owed Douglas's course upon it : 

"You shall have hard work," he wrote, "to get him 
directly to the point whether a territorial legislature 
has or has not the power to exclude slavery. But if 
you succeed in bringing him to it — though he will be 
compelled to say it possesses no such power — he will 
instantly take ground that slavery cannot actually exist 



THE FREEPORT DOCTRINE 123 

in the Territories unless the people desire it and so 
give it protection by territorial legislation. If this 
offends the South, he will let it offend them, as at all 
events he means to hold on to his chances in Illinois." 

On the night before the Freeport debate the ques- 
tion had also been considered in a hurried caucus of 
Lincoln's party friends. They all advised against pro- 
pounding it, saying, "If you do, you can never be sen- 
ator." "Gentlemen," replied Lincoln, "I am killing 
larger game; if Douglas answers, he can never be 
President, and the battle of i860 is worth a hundred 
of this." 

As Lincoln had predicted, Douglas had no resource 
but to repeat the sophism he had hastily invented in 
his Springfield speech of the previous year. 

"It matters not," replied he, "what way the Supreme 
Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract ques- 
tion whether slavery may or may not go into a Terri- 
tory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful 
means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for 
the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour 
anywhere unless it is supported by local police regula- 
lations. Those police regulations can only be estab- 
lished by the local legislature, and if the people are 
opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to 
that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually 
prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on 
the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will 
favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the de- 
cision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract 
question, still the right of the people to make a slave 
Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete 
under the Nebraska Bill." 

In the course of the next joint debate at Jonesboro', 
Mr. Lincoln easily disposed of this sophism by show- 



124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing: i. That, practically, slavery had worked its way 
into Territories without "police regulations" in al- 
most every instance; 2. That United States courts 
were established to protect and enforce rights under 
the Constitution; 3. That members of a territorial 
legislature could not violate their oath to support the 
Constitution of the United States; and, 4. That in 
default of legislative support, Congress would be 
bound to supply it for any right under the Constitution. 

The serious aspect of the matter, however, to Doug- 
las was not the criticism of the Republicans, but the 
view taken by Southern Democratic leaders, of his 
"Freeport doctrine," or doctrine of "unfriendly legis- 
lation." His opposition to the Lecompton Constitution 
in the Senate, grievous stumbling-block to their 
schemes as it had proved, might yet be passed over as 
a reckless breach of party discipline; but this new an- 
nouncement at Freeport was unpardonable doctrinal 
heresy, as rank as the abolitionism of Giddings and 
Love joy. 

The Freeport joint debate took place August 27, 
1858. When Congress convened on the first Monday 
in December of the same year, one of the first acts of 
the Democratic senators was to put him under party 
ban by removing him from the chairmanship of the 
Committee on Territories, a position he had held for 
eleven years. In due time, also, the Southern leaders 
broke up the Charleston convention rather than permit 
him to be nominated for President ; and, three weeks 
later, Senator Benjamin of Louisiana frankly set 
forth, in a Senate speech, the light in which they 
viewed his apostacy : 

"We accuse him for this, to wit : that having bar- 
gained with us upon a point upon which we were at 
issue, that it should be considered a judicial point; that 



LINCOLN'S DEFEAT 125 

he would abide the decision ; that he would act under 
the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party; 
that having said that to us here in the Senate, he went 
home, and, under the stress of a local election, his knees 
gave way; his whole person trembled. His adversary 
stood upon principle and was beaten ; and, lo ! he is the 
candidate of a mighty party for the presidency of the 
United States. The senator from Illinois faltered. 
He got the prize for which he faltered; but, lo! the 
grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp, 
because of his faltering in his former contest, and his 
success in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for 
an ignoble price, has cost him the loss of the presi- 
dency of the United States." 

In addition to the seven joint debates, both Lincoln 
and Douglas made speeches at separate meetings of 
their own during almost every day of the three months' 
campaign, and sometimes two or three speeches a day. 
At the election which was held on November 2, 1858, 
a legislature was chosen containing fifty-four Demo- 
crats and forty-six Republicans, notwithstanding the 
fact that the Republicans had a plurality of thirty- 
eight hundred and twenty-one on the popular vote. 
But the apportionment was based on the census of 
1850, and did not reflect recent changes in political 
sentiment, which, if fairly represented, would have 
given them an increased strength of from six to ten 
members in the legislature. Another circumstance had 
great influence in causing Lincoln's defeat. Douglas's 
opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in Congress 
had won him great sympathy among a few Republican 
leaders in the Eastern States. It was even whispered 
that Seward wished Douglas to succeed as a strong 
rebuke to the Buchanan administration. The most 
potent expression and influence of this feeling came, 



126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

however, from another quarter. Senator Crittenden 
of Kentucky, who, since Clay's death in 1852, was the 
acknowledged leader of what remained of the Whig 
party, wrote a letter during the campaign, openly ad- 
vocating the reelection of Douglas, and this, doubtless, 
influenced the vote of all the Illinois Whigs who had 
not yet formally joined the Republican party. Lin- 
coln's own analysis gives, perhaps, the clearest view 
of the unusual political conditions : 

"Douglas had three or four very distinguished men 
of the most extreme antislavery views of any men in 
the Republican party expressing their desire for his 
reelection to the Senate last year. That would of itself 
have seemed to be a little wonderful, but that wonder 
is heightened when we see that Wise of Virginia, a 
man exactly opposed to them, a man who believes in 
the divine right of slavery, was also expressing his 
desire that Douglas should be reelected ; that another 
man that may be said to be kindred to Wise, Mr. 
Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your own 
State, was also agreeing with the antislavery men in 
the North that Douglas ought to be reelected. Still to 
heighten the wonder, a senator from Kentucky, whom 
I have always loved with an affection as tender and 
endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was 
opposed to the antislavery men for reasons which 
seemed sufficient to him, and equally opposed to Wise 
and Breckinridge, was writing letters to Illinois to 
secure the reelection of Douglas. Now that all these 
conflicting elements should be brought, while at dag- 
gers' points with one another, to support him, is a feat 
that is worthy for you to note and consider. It is 
quite probable that each of these classes of men 
thought by the reelection of Douglas their peculiar 
views would gain something; it is probable that the 



'THE FIGHT MUST GO OX" 127 

antislavery men thought their views would gain some- 
thing; that Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as 
regards their opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought 
that his views would gain something, although he was 
opposed to both these other men. It is probable that 
each and all of them thought they were using Douglas, 
and it is yet an unsolved problem whether he was not 
using them all." 

Lincoln, though beaten in his race for the Senate, 
was by no means dismayed, nor did he lose his faith 
in the ultimate triumph of the cause he had so ably 
championed. Writing to a friend, he said : 

''You doubtless have seen ere this the result of the 
election here. Of course I wished, but I did not much 
expect a better result. ... I am glad I made the late 
race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable 
question of the age, which I could have had in no other 
way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be 
forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which 
will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am 
gone." 

And to another : 

"Yours of the 13th was received some days ago. 
The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must 
not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hun- 
dred defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be sup- 
ported in the late contest, both as the best means to 
break down and to uphold the slave interest. No in- 
genuity can keep these antagonistic elements in har- 
mony long. Another explosion will soon come." 

In his "House divided against itself" speech, Lin- 
coln had emphatically cautioned Republicans not to be 
led on a false trail by the opposition Douglas had made 
to the Lecompton Constitution; that his temporary 
quarrel with the Buchanan administration could not 



128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be relied upon to help overthrow that pro-slavery 
dynasty. 

"How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He 
don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is 
impressing the 'public heart' to care nothing about it. 
. . . Whenever, if ever, he and we can come to- 
gether on principle so that our great cause may have 
assistance from his great ability, I hope to have inter- 
posed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he is not 
now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not 
promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be in- 
trusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted 
friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are 
in the work, who do care for the result." 

Since the result of the Illinois senatorial campaign 
had assured the reelection of Douglas to the Senate, 
Lincoln's sage advice acquired a double significance 
and value. Almost immediately after the close of the 
campaign Douglas took a trip through the Southern 
States, and in speeches made by him at Memphis, at 
New Orleans, and at Baltimore sought to regain the 
confidence of Southern politicians by taking decidedly 
advanced ground toward Southern views on the sla- 
very question. On the sugar plantations of Louisi- 
ana, he said, it was not a question between the white 
man and the negro, but between the negro and the 
crocodile. He would say that between the negro and 
the crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but be- 
tween the negro and the white man, he would go for 
the white man. The Almighty had drawn a line on 
this continent, on the one side of which the soil must 
be cultivated by slave labor; on the other, by white 
labor. That line did not run on 36 and 30' [the Mis- 
souri Compromise line], for 36 and 30' runs over 
mountains and through valleys. But this slave line, he 



SENATOR BROWN'S QUESTIONS 129 

said, meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of 
the South, and the people living in their different 
localities and in the Territories must determine for 
themselves whether their "middle belt" were best 
adapted to slavery or free labor. He advocated the 
eventual annexation of Cuba and Central America. 
Still going a step further, he laid down a far-reaching 
principle. 

"It is a law of humanity," he said, "a law of civil- 
ization, that whenever a man or a race of men show 
themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, 
they must consent to be governed by those who are ca- 
pable of performing the duty. ... In accordance 
with this principle, I assert that the negro race, under 
all circumstances, at all times, and in all countries, has 
shown itself incapable of self-government." 

This pro-slavery coquetting, however, availed him 
nothing, as he felt himself obliged in the same speeches 
to defend his Freeport doctrine. Having taken his seat 
in Congress, Senator Brown of Mississippi, toward 
the close of the short session, catechized him sharply 
on this point. 

"If the territorial legislature refuses to act," he in- 
quired, "will you act? If it pass unfriendly acts, will 
you pass friendly? If it pass laws hostile to slavery, 
will you annul them, and substitute laws favoring 
slavery in their stead?" 

There was no evading these direct questions, and 
Douglas answered frankly: 

"I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I 
do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry 
any one Democratic State of the North on the platform 
that it is the duty of the Federal government to force 
the people of a Territory to have slavery when they 
do not want it." 



130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

An extended discussion between Northern and 
Southern Democratic senators followed the colloquy, 
which showed that the Freeport doctrine had opened 
up an irreparable schism between the Northern and 
Southern wings of the Democratic party. 

In all the speeches made by Douglas during his 
Southern tour, he continually referred to Mr. Lincoln 
as the champion of abolitionism, and to his doctrines as 
the platform of the abolition or Republican party. The 
practical effect of this course was to extend and pro- 
long the Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858, to ex- 
pand it to national breadth, and gradually to merge 
it in the coming presidential campaign. The effect 
of this was not only to keep before the public the posi- 
tion of Lincoln as the Republican champion of Illinois, 
but also gradually to lift him into general recognition 
as a national leader. Throughout the year 1859 poli- 
ticians and newspapers came to look upon Lincoln as 
the one antagonist who could at all times be relied on 
to answer and refute the Douglas arguments. His 
propositions were so forcible and direct, his phrase- 
ology so apt and fresh, that they held the attention and 
excited comment. A letter written by him in answer 
to an invitation to attend a celebration of Jefferson's 
birthday in Boston, contains some notable passages : 

"Soberly, it is now no child's play to save the prin- 
ciples of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. 
One would state with great confidence that he could 
convince any sane child that the simpler propositions 
of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, 
utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and 
axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions 
and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied 
and evaded with no small show of success. One dash- 
ingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another 



LINCOLN'S WARNING 131 

bluntly calls them 'self-evident lies.' And others in- 
sidiously argue that they apply to 'superior races.' 
These expressions, differing in form,, are identical in 
object and effect — the supplanting the principles of 
free government, and restoring those of classification, 
caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convo- 
cation of crowned heads plotting against the people. 
They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of re- 
turning despotism. We must repulse them, or they 
will subjugate us. This is a world of compensation; 
and he who would be no slave must consent to have no 
slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it 
not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long 
retain it." 

Douglas's quarrel with the Buchanan administra- 
tion had led many Republicans to hope that they might 
be able to utilize his name and his theory of popular 
sovereignty to aid them in their local campaigns. Lin- 
coln knew from his recent experience the peril of 
this delusive party strategy, and was constant and ear- 
nest in his warnings against adopting it. In a little 
speech after the Chicago municipal election on March 
1, 1859, he said: 

"If we, the Republicans of this State, had made 
Judge Douglas our candidate for the Senate of the 
United States last year, and had elected him, there 
would to-day be no Republican party in this Union. 
. . . Let the Republican party of Illinois dally with 
Judge Douglas, let them fall in behind him and make 
him their candidate, and they do not absorb him — he 
absorbs them. They would come out at the end all 
Douglas men, all claimed by him as having indorsed 
every one of his doctrines upon the great subject with 
which the whole nation is engaged at this hour — that 
the question of negro slavery is simply a question of 



132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dollars and cents ; that the Almighty has drawn a line 
across the continent, on one side of which labor — the 
cultivation of the soil — must always be performed by 
slaves. It would be claimed that we, like him, do not 
care whether slavery is voted up or voted down. Had 
we made him our candidate and given him a great 
majority, we should never have heard an end of decla- 
rations by him that we had indorsed all these dogmas." 

To a Kansas friend he wrote on May 14, 1859: 

"You will probably adopt resolutions in the nature 
of a platform. I think the only temptation will be to 
lower the Republican standard in order to gather re- 
cruits. In my judgment, such a step would be a 
serious mistake, and open a gap through which more 
would pass out than pass in. And this would be the 
same whether the letting down should be in deference 
to Douglasism, or to the Southern opposition element; 
either would surrender the object of the Republican 
organization — the preventing of the spread and nation- 
alization of slavery. . . . Let a union be at- 
tempted on the basis of ignoring the slavery question, 
and magnifying other questions which the people are 
just now not caring about, and it will result in gain- 
ing no single electoral vote in the South, and losing 
every one in the North." 

To Schuyler Colfax (afterward Vice-President) he 
said in a letter dated July 6, 1859: 

"My main object in such conversation would be to 
hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks gen- 
erally, and particularly for the contest of i860. The 
point of danger is the temptation in different localities 
to 'platform' for something which will be popular just 
there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand else- 
where, and especially in a national convention. As 
instances : the movement against foreigners in Massa- 



LINCOLN'S WARNING 133 

chusetts ; in New Hampshire, to make obedience to the 
fugitive-slave law punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to 
repeal the fugitive-slave law ; and squatter sovereignty, 
in Kansas. In these things there is explosive matter 
enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions, 
if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of 
conventions is very likely to find its way into them." 

And again, to another warm friend in Columbus, 
Ohio, he wrote in a letter dated July 28, 1859: 

"There is another thing our friends are doing which 
gives me some uneasiness. It is their leaning toward 
'popular sovereignty.' There are three substantial ob- 
jections to this. First, no party can command respect 
which sustains this year what it opposed last. Sec- 
ondly, Douglas (who is the most dangerous enemy 
of liberty, because the most insidious one) would have 
little support in the North, and. by consequence, no 
capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his 
friends thus magnifying him and his humbug. But 
lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's popular sovereignty, ac- 
cepted by the public mind as a just principle, national- 
izes slavery, and revives the African slave-trade inev- 
itably. Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying 
slaves in Africa, are identical things, identical rights 
or identical wrongs, and the argument which estab- 
lishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand 
years for a sound reason why Congress shall not hin- 
der the people of Kansas from having slaves, and when 
you have found it, it will be an equally good one why 
Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from 
importing slaves from Africa." 

An important election occurred in the State of Ohio 
in the autumn of 1859, and during the canvass Douglas 
made two speeches in which, as usual, his pointed at- 
tacks were directed against Lincoln by name. Quite 



134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

naturally, the Ohio Republicans called Lincoln to 
answer him, and the marked impression created by 
Lincoln's replies showed itself not alone in their un- 
precedented circulation in print in newspapers and 
pamphlets, but also in the decided success which the 
Ohio Republicans gained at the polls. About the same 
time, also, Douglas printed a long political essay in 
"Harper's Magazine," using as a text quotations from 
Lincoln's "House divided against itself" speech, and 
Seward's Rochester speech defining the "irrepressible 
conflict." Attorney-General Black of President Bu- 
chanan's cabinet here entered the lists with an anony- 
mously printed pamphlet in pungent criticism of 
Douglas's "Harper" essay; which again was followed 
by reply and rejoinder on both sides. 

Into this field of overheated political controversy 
the news of the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry 
on Sunday, October 19, fell with startling portent. 
The scattering and tragic fighting in the streets of the 
little town on Monday; the dramatic capture of the 
fanatical leader on Tuesday by a detachment of Fed- 
eral marines under the command of Robert E. Lee, the 
famous Confederate general of subsequent years; the 
undignified haste of his trial and condemnation by the 
Virginia authorities ; the interviews of Governor Wise, 
Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham 
with the prisoner; his sentence, and execution on the 
gallows on December 2; and the hysterical laudations 
of his acts by a few prominent and extreme abolition- 
ists in the East, kept public opinion, both North and 
South, in an inflamed and feverish state for nearly six 
weeks. 

Mr. Lincoln's habitual freedom from passion, and 
the steady and common-sense judgment he applied to 
this exciting event, which threw almost everybody into 



JOHN BROWN 135 

an extreme of feeling or utterance, are well illustrated 
by the temperate criticism he made of it a few months 
later : 

"John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a 
slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men 
to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves 
refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that 
the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough 
it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, 
corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, 
at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthu- 
siast broods over the oppression of a people till he fan- 
cies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. 
He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than 
his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napo- 
leon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry 
were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The 
eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, 
and on New England in the other, does not disprove 
the sameness of the two things." 



Lincoln's Kansas Speeches — The Cooper Institute Speech 
— New England Speeches — The Democratic Schism — 
Senator Brown's Resolutions — Jefferson Davis's Reso- 
lutions — The Charleston Convention — Majority and 
Minority Reports — Cotton State Delegations Secede — 
Charleston Convention Adjourns — Democratic Balti- 
more Convention Splits — Breckinridge Nominated — 
Douglas Nominated — Bell Nominated by Union Con- 
stitutional Convention — Chicago Convention — Lincoln's 
Letters to Pickett and Judd — The Pivotal States — Lin- 
coln Nominated 

DURING the month of December, 1859, Mr. Lin- 
coln was invited to the Territory of Kansas, 
where he made speeches at a number of its new and 
growing towns. In these speeches he laid special em- 
phasis upon the necessity of maintaining undiminished 
the vigor of the Republican organization and the high 
plane of the Republican doctrine. 

"We want, and must have," said he, "a national 
policy as to slavery which deals with it as being a 
wrong. Whoever would prevent slavery becoming 
national and perpetual yields all when he yields to a 
policy which treats it either as being right, or as being 
a matter of indifference." "To effect our main object 
we have to employ auxiliary means. We must hold 
conventions, adopt platforms, select candidates, and 
carry elections. At every step we must be true to the 
main purpose. If we adopt a platform falling short 
136 



COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH 137 

of our principle, or elect a man rejecting our principle, 
we not only take nothing affirmative by our success, 
but we draw upon us the positive embarrassment of 
seeming ourselves to have abandoned our principle." 

A still more important service, however, in giving 
the Republican presidential campaign of i860 precise 
form and issue was rendered by him during the first 
three months of the new year. The public mind had 
become so preoccupied with the dominant subject of 
national politics, that a committee of enthusiastic 
young Republicans of New York and Brooklyn ar- 
ranged a course of public lectures by prominent states- 
men, and Mr. Lincoln was invited to deliver the third 
one of the series. The meeting took place in the hall of 
the Cooper Institute in New York, on the evening of 
February 27, i860; and the audience was made up of 
ladies and gentlemen comprising the leading represen- 
tatives of the wealth, culture, and influence of the great 
metropolis. 

Mr. Lincoln's name and arguments had filled so 
large a space in Eastern newspapers, both friendly and 
hostile, that the listeners before him were intensely 
curious to see and hear this rising Western politician. 
The West was even at that late day but imperfectly 
understood by the East. The poets and editors, the 
bankers and merchants of New York vaguely remem- 
bered having read in their books that it was the home 
of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, the country of 
bowie-knives and pistols, of steamboat explosions and 
mobs, of wild speculation and the repudiation of State 
debts; and these half-forgotten impressions had lately 
been vividly recalled by a several years' succession of 
newspaper reports retailing the incidents of Border 
Ruffian violence and free-State guerrilla reprisals dur- 
ing the civil war in Kansas. What was to be the type, 



1 38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the character, the language of this speaker? How 
would he impress the great editor Horace Greeley, who 
sat among the invited guests ; David Dudley Field, the 
great lawyer, who escorted him to the platform ; Wil- 
liam Cullen Bryant, the great poet, who presided over 
the meeting? 

Judging from after effects, the audience quickly for- 
got these questioning thoughts. They had but time 
to note Mr. Lincoln's impressive stature, his strongly 
marked features, the clear ring of his rather high- 
pitched voice, and the almost commanding earnestness 
of his manner. His beginning foreshadowed a dry ar- 
gument, using as a text Douglas's phrase that "our 
fathers, when they framed the government under 
which we live, understood this question just as well 
and even better than we do now." But the concise 
statements, the strong links of reasoning, and the ir- 
resistible conclusions of the argument with which the 
speaker followed his close historical analysis of how 
"our fathers" understood "this question," held every 
listener as though each were individually merged in 
the speaker's thought and demonstration. 

"It is surely safe to assume," said he, with emphasis, 
"that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitu- 
tion and the seventy-six members of the Congress 
which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, 
do certainly include those who may be fairly called 
'our fathers who framed the government under which 
we live.' And, so assuming, I defy any man to show 
that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared 
that, in his understanding, any proper division of local 
from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitu- 
tion, forbade the Federal government to control as to 
slavery in the Federal Territories." 

With equal skill he next dissected the complaints, 



COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH 139 

the demands, and the threats to dissolve the Union 
made by the Southern States, pointed out their empti- 
ness, their fallacy, and their injustice, and denned the 
exact point and center of the agitation. 

"Holding, as they do," said he, "that slavery is mor- 
ally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to 
demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal 
right and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably 
withhold this on any ground, save our conviction that 
slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, 
laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, 
and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, 
we cannot justly object to its nationality — its univer- 
sality! If it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon 
its extension — its enlargement. All they ask we could 
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask 
they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. 
Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, 
is the precise fact upon which depends the whole con- 
troversy. . . . Wrong as we think slavery is 
we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because 
that much is due to the necessity arising from its 
actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our 
votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the na- 
tional Territories, and to overrun us here in the free 
States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let 
us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let 
us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances 
wherewith we are so industriously plied and bela- 
bored, contrivances such as groping for some middle 
ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the 
search for a man who should be neither a living man 
nor a dead man ; such as a policy of 'don't care,' on a 
question about which all true men do care; such as 
Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to 



I4Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

disunionists ; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not 
the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as 
invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay 
what Washington said, and undo what Washington 
did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
accusations against us, nor frightened from it by men- 
aces of destruction to the government nor of dungeons 
to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, 
and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty 
as we understand it." 

The close attention bestowed on its delivery, the 
hearty applause that greeted its telling points, and the 
enthusiastic comments of the Republican journals next 
morning showed that Lincoln's Cooper Institute speech 
had taken New York by storm. It was printed in full 
in four of the leading New York dailies, and at once 
went into large circulation in carefully edited pamphlet 
editions. From New York, Lincoln made a tour of 
speech-making through several of the New England 
States, and was everywhere received with enthusiastic 
welcome and listened to with an eagerness that bore a 
marked result in their spring elections. The interest 
of the factory men who listened to these addresses was 
equaled, perhaps excelled, by the gratified surprise of 
college professors when they heard the style and 
method of a popular Western orator that would bear 
the test of their professional criticism and compare 
with the best examples in their standard text-books. 

The attitude of the Democratic party in the coming 
presidential campaign was now also rapidly taking 
shape. Great curiosity existed whether the radical dif- 
ferences between its Northern and Southern wings could 
by any possibility be removed or adjusted, whether the 
adherents of Douglas and those of Buchanan could be 
brought to join in a common platform and in the sup- 



DEMOCRATIC DIFFERENCES 141 

port of a single candidate. The Democratic leaders in 
the Southern States had become more and more out- 
spoken in their pro-slavery demands. They had ad- 
vanced step by step from the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise in 1854, the attempt to capture Kansas 
by Missouri invasions in 1855 and 1856, the support 
of the Dred Scott decision and the Lecompton fraud in 

1857, the repudiation of Douglas's Freeport heresy in 

1858, to the demand for a congressional slave code for 
the Territories and the recognition of the doctrine of 
property in slaves. These last two points they had dis- 
tinctly formulated in the first session of the Thirty- 
sixth Congress. On January 18, i860, Senator Brown 
of Mississippi introduced into the Senate two resolu- 
tions, one asserting the nationality of slavery, the other 
that, when necessary, Congress should pass laws for 
its protection in the Territories. On February 2 Jef- 
ferson Davis introduced another series of resolutions 
intended to serve as a basis for the national Democratic 
platform, the central points of which were that the 
right to take and hold slaves in the Territories could 
neither be impaired nor annulled, and that it was the 
duty of Congress to supply any deficiency of laws for 
its protection. Perhaps even more significant than 
these formulated doctrines was the pro-slavery spirit 
manifested in the congressional debates. Two months 
were wasted in a parliamentary struggle to prevent the 
election of the Republican, John Sherman, as Speaker 
of the House of Representatives, because the Southern 
members charged that he had recommended an "abo- 
lition" book ; during which time the most sensational 
and violent threats of disunion were made in both the 
House and the Senate, containing repeated declarations 
that they would never submit to the inauguration of a 
"Black Republican" President. 



142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

When the national Democratic convention met at 
Charleston, on April 23, i860, there at once became 
evident the singular condition that the delegates from 
the free States were united and enthusiastic in their 
determination to secure the nomination of Douglas as 
the Democratic candidate for President, while the dele- 
gates from the slave States were equally united and 
determined upon forcing the acceptance of an extreme 
pro-slavery platform. All expectations of a compro- 
mise, all hope of coming to an understanding by jug- 
gling omissions or evasions in their declaration of 
party principles were quickly dissipated. The platform 
committee, after three days and nights of fruitless ef- 
fort, presented two antagonistic reports. The major- 
ity report declared that neither Congress nor a terri- 
torial legislature could abolish or prohibit slavery in the 
Territories, and that it was the duty of the Federal 
government to protect it when necessary. To this doc- 
trine the Northern members could not consent; but 
they were willing to adopt the ambiguous declaration 
that property rights in slaves were judicial in their 
character, and that they would abide the decisions of 
the Supreme Court on such questions. 

The usual expedient of recommitting both reports 
brought no relief from the deadlock. A second ma- 
jority and a second minority report exhibited the same 
irreconcilable divergence in slightly different language, 
and the words of mutual defiance exchanged in debat- 
ing the first report rose to a parliamentary storm when 
the second came under discussion. On the seventh day 
the convention came to a vote, and, the Northern dele- 
gates being in the majority, the minority report was 
substituted for that of the majority of the committee 
by one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and 
thirty-eight delegates — in other words, the Douglas 



DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS 143 

platform was declared adopted. Upon this the dele- 
gates of the cotton States — Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Ar- 
kansas — withdrew from the convention. It soon ap- 
peared, however, that the Douglas delegates had 
achieved only a barren victory. Their majority could 
indeed adopt a platform, but, under the acknowledged 
two-thirds rule which governs Democratic national 
conventions, they had not sufficient votes to nominate 
their candidate. During the fifty-seven ballots taken, 
the Douglas men could muster only one hundred and 
fifty-two and one half votes of the two hundred and 
two necessary to a choice; and to prevent mere slow 
disintegration the convention adjourned on the tenth 
day, under a resolution to reassemble in Baltimore on 
June 18. 

Nothing was gained, however, by the delay. In the 
interim, Jefferson Davis and nineteen other Southern 
leaders published an address commending the with- 
drawal of the cotton States delegates, and in a Senate 
debate Davis laid down the plain proposition, "We 
want nothing more than a simple declaration that negro 
slaves are property, and we want the recognition of 
the obligation of the Federal government to protect 
that property like all other." 

Upon the reassembling of the Charleston convention 
at Baltimore, it underwent a second disruption on the 
fifth day ; the Northern wing nominated Stephen A. 
Douglas of Illinois, and the Southern wing John C. 
Breckinridge of Kentucky as their respective candi- 
dates for President. In the meanwhile, also, regular 
and irregular delegates from some twenty-two States, 
representing fragments of the old Whig party, had con- 
vened at Baltimore on May 9 and nominated John Bell 
of Tennessee as their candidate for President, upon 



144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a platform ignoring the slavery issue and declaring 
that they would "recognize no other political principle 
than the Constitution of the country, the union of the 
States, and the enforcement of the laws." 

In the long contest between slavery extension and 
slavery restriction which was now approaching its cul- 
mination, the growing demands and increasing bitter- 
ness of the pro-slavery party had served in an equal 
degree to intensify the feelings and stimulate the ef- 
forts of the Republican party; and, remembering the 
encouraging opposition strength which the united vote 
of Fremont and Fillmore had shown in 1856, they 
felt encouraged to hope for possible success in i860, 
since the Fillmore party had practically disappeared 
throughout the free States. When, therefore, the 
Charleston convention was rent asunder and adjourned 
on May 10 without making a nomination, the possibil- 
ity of Republican victory seemed to have risen to proba- 
bility. Such a feeling inspired the eager enthusiasm 
of the delegates to the Republican national convention 
which met, according to appointment, at Chicago on 
May 16. 

A large, temporary wooden building, christened 
"The Wigwam," had been erected in which to hold 
its sessions, and it was estimated that ten thousand per- 
sons were assembled in it to witness the proceedings. 
William H. Seward of New York was recognized as 
the leading candidate, but Chase of Ohio, Cameron of 
Pennsylvania, Bates of Missouri, and several promi- 
nent Republicans from other States were known to 
have active and zealous followers. The name of 
Abraham Lincoln had also often been mentioned dur- 
ing his growing fame, and, fully a year before, an 
ardent Republican editor of Illinois had requested per- 
mission to announce him in his newspaper. Lincoln, 



LETTERS TO PARTY FRIENDS 145 

however, discouraged such action at that time, answer- 
ing him : 

"As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must 
in candor say I do not think myself fit for the presi- 
dency. I certainly am flattered and gratified that some 
partial friends think of me in that connection; but I 
really think it best for our cause that no concerted 
effort, such as you suggest, should be made." 

He had given an equally positive answer to an eager 
Ohio friend in the preceding July; but about Christ- 
mas, 1859, an influential caucus of his strongest Illi- 
nois adherents made a personal request that he would 
permit them to use his name, and he gave his consent, 
not so much in any hope of becoming the nominee for 
President, as in possibly reaching the second place on 
the ticket; or at least of making such a showing of 
strength before the convention as would aid him in his 
future senatorial ambition at home, or perhaps carry 
him into the cabinet of the Republican President, 
should one succeed. He had not been eager to enter the 
lists, but once having agreed to do so, it was but 
natural that he should manifest a becoming interest, 
subject, however, now as always, to his inflexible rule 
of fair dealing and honorable faith to all his party 
friends. 

"I do not understand Trumbull and myself to be 
rivals," he wrote December 9, 1859. "You know I 
am pledged not to enter a struggle with him for the 
seat in the Senate now occupied by him; and yet I 
would rather have a full term in the Senate than in 
the presidency." 

And on February 9 he wrote to the same Illinois 
friend : 

"I am not in a position where it would hurt much for 
me not to be nominated on the national ticket; but I 



146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

am where it would hurt some for me not to get the 
Illinois delegates. What I expected when I wrote the 
the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now happening. 
Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against me ; 
and they will, for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates 
egg in the South, and to the Seward egg in the North, 
and go far toward squeezing me out in the middle 
with nothing. Can you not help me a little in this 
matter in your end of the vineyard?" 

It turned out that the delegates whom the Illinois 
State convention sent to the national convention at 
Chicago were men not only of exceptional standing and 
ability, but filled with the warmest zeal for Mr. Lin- 
coln's success; and they were able at once to impress 
upon delegates from other States his sterling personal 
worth and fitness, and his superior availability. It 
needed but little political arithmetic to work out the 
sum of existing political chances. It was almost self- 
evident that in the coming November election victory 
or defeat would hang upon the result in the four piv- 
otal States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and 
Illinois. It was quite certain that no Republican can- 
didate could carry a single one of the fifteen slave 
States; and equally sure that Breckinridge, on his ex- 
treme pro-slavery platform, could not carry a single 
one of the eighteen free States. But there was a 
chance that one or more of these four pivotal free 
States might cast its vote for Douglas and popular sov- 
ereignty. 

A candidate was needed, therefore, who could suc- 
cessfully cope with Douglas and the Douglas theory; 
and this ability had been convincingly demonstrated 
by Lincoln. As a mere personal choice, a majority of 
the convention would have preferred Seward ; but in 
the four pivotal States there were many voters who 



CHICAGO CONVENTION 147 

believed Seward's antislavery views to be too radical. 
They shrank apprehensively from the phrase in one of 
his speeches that "there is a higher law than the Con- 
stitution." These pivotal States all lay adjoining slave 
States, and their public opinion was infected with 
something of the undefined dread of "abolitionism/' 
When the delegates of the pivotal States were inter- 
viewed, they frankly confessed that they could not 
carry their States for Seward, and that would mean 
certain defeat if he were the nominee for President. 
For their voters Lincoln stood on more acceptable 
ground. His speeches had been more conservative ; his 
local influence in his own State of Illinois was also a 
factor not to be idly thrown away. 

Plain, practical reasoning of this character found 
ready acceptance among the delegates to the conven- 
tion. Their eagerness for the success of the cause 
largely overbalanced their personal preferences for fa- 
vorite aspirants. When the convention met, the fresh, 
hearty hopefulness of its members was a most inspir- 
ing reflection of the public opinion in the States that 
sent them. They went at their work with an earnest- 
ness which was an encouraging premonition of success, 
and they felt a gratifying support in the presence of the 
ten thousand spectators who looked on at their work. 
Few conventions have ever been pervaded by such a 
depth of feeling, or exhibited such a reserve of latent 
enthusiasm. The cheers that greeted the entrance of 
popular favorites, and the short speeches on prelimi- 
nary business, ran and rolled through the great audi- 
ence in successive moving waves of sound that were 
echoed and reechoed from side to side of the vast build- 
ing. Not alone the delegates on the central platform, 
but the multitude of spectators as well, felt that they 
were playing a part in a great historical event. 



148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The temporary, and afterward the permanent or- 
ganization, was finished on the first day, with somewhat 
less than usual of the wordy and tantalizing small talk 
which these routine proceedings always call forth. On 
the second day the platform committee submitted its 
work, embodying the carefully considered and skilfully 
framed body of doctrines upon which the Republican 
party, made up only four years before from such pre- 
viously heterogeneous and antagonistic political ele- 
ments, was now able to find common and durable 
ground of agreement. Around its central tenet, which 
denied "the authority of Congress, of a territorial 
legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal exis- 
tence to slavery in any territory of the United States," 
were grouped vigorous denunciations of the various 
steps and incidents of the pro-slavery reaction, and its 
prospective demands; while its positive recommenda- 
tions embraced the immediate admission of Kansas, 
free homesteads to actual settlers, river and harbor 
improvements of a national character, a railroad to the 
Pacific Ocean, and the maintenance of existing natural- 
ization laws. 

The platform was about to be adopted without ob- 
jection, when a flurry of discussion arose over an 
amendment, proposed by Mr. Giddings of Ohio, to in- 
corporate in it that phrase of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence which declares the right of all men to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Impatience was 
at once manifested lest any change should produce end- 
less delay and dispute. "I believe in the Ten Com- 
mandments," commented a member, ''but I do not 
want them in a political platform" ; and the proposition 
was voted down. Upon this the old antislavery vet- 
eran felt himself agrieved, and, taking up his hat, 
marched out of the convention. In the course of an 



CHICAGO CONVENTION 149 

hour's desultory discussion however, a member, with 
stirring oratorical emphasis, asked whether the conven- 
tion was prepared to go upon record before the coun- 
try as voting down the words of the Declaration of 
Independence — whether the men of i860, on the free 
prairies of the West, quailed before repeating the 
words enunciated by the men of '76 at Philadelphia. 
In an impulse of patriotic reaction, the amendment was 
incorporated into the platform, and Mr. Giddings was 
brought back by his friends, his face beaming with 
triumph ; and the stormy acclaim of the audience mani- 
fested the deep feeling which the incident evoked. 

On the third day it was certain that balloting would 
begin, and crowds hurried to the Wigwam in a fever of 
curiosity. Having grown restless at the indispensable 
routine preliminaries, when Mr. Evarts nominated 
William H. Seward of New York for President, they 
greeted his name with a perfect storm of applause. 
Then Mr. Judd nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illi- 
nois, and in the tremendous cheering that broke from 
the throats of his admirers and followers the former 
demonstration dwindled to comparative feebleness. 
Again and again these contests of lungs and enthusi- 
asm were repeated as the choice of New York was 
seconded by Michigan, and that of Illinois by In- 
diana. 

When other names had been duly presented, the 
cheering at length subsided, and the chairman an- 
nounced that balloting would begin. Many spectators 
had provided themselves with tally-lists, and when the 
first roll-call was completed were able at once to per- 
ceive the drift of popular preference. Cameron, Chase, 
Bates, McLean, Dayton, and Collamer were indorsed 
by the substantial votes of their own States; but two 
names stood out in marked superiority: Seward, who 



150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had received one hundred and seventy-three and one 
half votes, and Lincoln, one hundred and two. 

The New York delegation was so thoroughly per- 
suaded of the final success of their candidate that they 
did not comprehend the significance of this first ballot. 
Had tkey reflected that their delegation alone had con- 
tributed seventy votes to Seward's total, they would 
have understood that outside of the Empire State, upon 
this first showing, Lincoln held their favorite almost 
an even race. As the second ballot progressed, their 
anxiety visibly increased. They watched with eager- 
ness as the complimentary votes first cast for State 
favorites were transferred now to one, now to the other 
of the recognized leaders in the contest, and their hopes 
sank when the result of the second ballot was an- 
nounced : Seward, one hundred and eighty-four and 
one half, Lincoln, one hundred and eighty-one; and a 
volume of applause, which was with difficulty checked 
by the chairman, shook the Wigwam at this announce- 
ment. 

Then followed a short interval of active caucusing 
in the various delegations, while excited men went 
about rapidly interchanging questions, solicitations, 
and messages between delegations from different 
States. Neither candidate had yet received a major- 
ity of all the votes cast, and the third ballot was begun 
amid a deep, almost painful suspense, delegates and 
spectators alike recording each announcement of votes 
on their tally-sheets with nervous fingers. But the 
doubt was of short duration. The second ballot had 
unmistakably pointed out the winning man. Hesi- 
tating delegations and fragments from many States 
steadily swelled the Lincoln column. Long before the 
secretaries made the official announcement, the totals 
had been figured up : Lincoln, two hundred and thirty- 



LINCOLN NOMINATED 151 

one and one half, Seward, one hundred and eighty. 
Counting the scattering votes, four hundred and sixty- 
five ballots had been cast, and two hundred and thirty- 
three were necessary to a choice. Seward had lost four 
and one half, Lincoln had gained fifty and one half, 
and only one and one half votes more were needed to 
make a nomination. 

The Wigwam suddenly became as still as a church, 
and everybody leaned forward to see whose voice would 
break the spell. Before the lapse of a minute, David 
K. Cartter sprang upon his chair and reported a change 
of four Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln. Then a 
teller shouted a name toward the skylight, and the 
boom of cannon from the roof of the Wigwam an- 
nounced the nomination and started the cheering of 
the overjoyed Illinoisans down the long Chicago 
streets; while in the Wigwam, delegation after dele- 
gation changed its vote to the victor amid a tumult of 
hurrahs. When quiet was somewhat restored, Mr. 
Evarts, speaking for New York and for Seward, moved 
to make the nomination unanimous, and Mr. Browning 
gracefully returned the thanks of Illinois for the honor 
the convention had conferred upon the State. In the 
afternoon the convention completed its work by nom- 
inating Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for Vice-President; 
and as the delegates sped homeward in the night trains, 
they witnessed, in the bonfires and cheering crowds 
at the stations, that a memorable presidential campaign 
was already begun. 



XI 



Candidates and Platforms — The Political Chances — Deca- 
tur Lincoln Resolution — John Hanks and the Lin- 
coln Rails — The Rail-Splitter Candidate — The Wide- 
Aivakes — Douglas's Southern Tour — Jefferson Davis's 
Address — Fusion — Lincoln at the State House — The 
Election Result 

THE nomination of Lincoln at Chicago completed 
the preparations of the different parties of the 
country for the presidential contest of i860; and pre- 
sented the unusual occurrence of an appeal to the voters 
of the several States by four distinct political organ- 
izations. In the order of popular strength which they 
afterward developed, they were : 

1. The Republican party, whose platform declared 
in substance that slavery was wrong, and that its fur- 
ther extension should be prohibited by Congress. Its 
candidates were Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for Presi- 
dent, and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for Vice- 
President. 

2. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, 
which declared indifference whether slavery were right 
or wrong, extended or prohibited, and proposed to 
permit the people of a Territory to decide whether they 
would prevent or establish it. Its candidates were 
Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President, and 
Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President. 

3. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, 
which declared that slavery was right and beneficial, 

152 



POLITICAL CHANCES 153 

and whose policy was to extend the institution, and 
create new slave States. Its candidates were John C. 
Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Joseph 
Lane of Oregon for Vice-President. 

4. The Constitutional Union party, which professed 
to ignore the question of slavery, and declared it would 
recognize no political principles other than "the Con- 
stitution of the country, the union of the States, and 
the enforcement of the laws." Its candidates were 
John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward 
Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President. 

In the array of these opposing candidates and their 
platforms, it could be easily calculated from the very 
beginning that neither Lincoln nor Douglas had any 
chance to carry a slave State, nor Breckinridge nor 
Bell to carry a free State; and that neither Douglas 
in the free States, nor Bell in either section could ob- 
tain electoral votes enough to succeed. Therefore, but 
two alternatives seemed probable. Either Lincoln 
would be chosen by electoral votes, or, upon his failure 
to obtain a sufficient number, the election would be 
thrown into the House of Representatives, in which 
case the course of combination, chance, or intrigue 
could not be foretold. The political situation and its 
possible results thus involved a degree of uncertainty 
sufficient to hold out a contingent hope to all the candi- 
dates, and to inspire the followers of each to active 
exertion. This hope and inspiration, added to the hot 
temper which the long discussion of antagonistic prin- 
ciples had engendered, served to infuse into the cam- 
paign enthusiasm, earnestness, and even bitterness, ac- 
cording to local conditions in the different sections. 

In campaign enthusiasm the Republican party easily 
took the lead. About a week before his nomination, 
Mr. Lincoln had been present at the Illinois State con- 



154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

vention at Decatur in Coles County, not far from the 
old Lincoln home, when, at a given signal, there 
marched into the convention old John Hanks, one of 
his boyhood companions, and another pioneer, who 
bc:° on their shoulders two long fence rails decorated 
with a banner inscribed : "Two rails from a lot made by 
Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon 
Bottom in the year 1830." They were greeted with a 
tremendous shout of applause from the whole conven- 
tion, succeeded by a united call for Lincoln, who sat 
on the platform. The tumult would not subside until 
he rose to speak, when he said : 

"Gentlemen : I suppose you want to know some- 
thing about those things [pointing to old John and the 
rails]. Well, the truth is, John Hanks and I did make 
rails in the Sagamon Bottom. I don't know whether 
we made those rails or not; fact is, I don't think they 
are a credit to the makers [laughing as he spoke]. 
But I do know this : I made rails then, and I think I 
could make better ones than these now." 

Still louder cheering followed this short, but effec- 
tive reply. But the convention was roused to its full 
warmth of enthusiasm when a resolution was imme- 
diately and unanimously adopted declaring that 
"Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Repub- 
lican party of Illinois for the Presidency," and direct- 
ing the delegates to the Chicago convention "to use 
all honorable means to secure his nomination, and to 
cast the vote of the State as a unit for him." 

It was this resolution which the Illinois delegation 
had so successfully carried out at Chicago. And, be- 
sides, they had carried with them the two fence rails, 
and set them up in state at the Lincoln headquarters 
at their hotel, where enthusiastic lady friends gaily 
trimmed them with flowers and ribbons and lighted 



THE "WIDE-AWAKES" 155 

them up with tapers. These slight preliminaries, duly 
embellished in the newspapers, gave the key to the 
Republican campaign, which designated Lincoln as the 
Rail-splitter Candidate, and, added to his common Illi- 
nois sobriquet of "Honest Old Abe," furnished both 
country and city campaign orators a powerfully sym- 
pathetic appeal to the rural and laboring element of 
the United States. 

When these homely but picturesque appellations 
were fortified by the copious pamphlet and newspaper 
biographies in which people read the story of his hum- 
ble beginnings, and how he had risen, by dint of simple, 
earnest work and native genius, through privation and 
difficulty, first to fame and leadership in his State, and 
now to fame and leadership in the nation, they grew 
quickly into symbols of a faith and trust destined to 
play no small part in a political revolution of which 
the people at large were not as yet even dreaming. 

Another feature of the campaign also quickly de- 
veloped itself. On the preceding 5th of March, one of 
Mr. Lincoln's New England speeches had been made 
at Hartford, Connecticut ; and at its close he was es- 
corted to his hotel by a procession of the local Repub- 
lican club, at the head of which marched a few of its 
members bearing torches and wearing caps and capes 
of glazed oilcloth, the primary purpose of which was to 
shield their clothes from the dripping oil of their 
torches. Both the simplicity and the efficiency of the 
uniform caught the popular eye, as did also the name, 
"Wide-Awakes," applied to them by the "Hartford 
Courant." The example found quick imitation in 
Hartford and adjoining towns, and when Mr. Lincoln 
was made candidate for President, every city, town, 
and nearly every village in the North, within a brief 
space, had its organized Wide-Awake club, with their 



156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

half-military uniform and drill; and these clubs were 
often, later in the campaign, gathered into imposing 
torch-light processions, miles in length, on occasions 
of important party meetings and speech-making. It 
was the revived spirit of the Harrison campaign of 
twenty years before; but now, shorn of its fun and 
frolic, it was strengthened by the power of organiza- 
tion and the tremendous impetus of earnest devotion 
to a high principle. 

It was a noteworthy feature of the campaign that 
the letters of acceptance of all the candidates, either in 
distinct words or unmistakable implication, declared 
devotion to the Union, while at the same time the ad- 
herents of each were charging disunion sentiments and 
intentions upon the other three parties. Douglas him- 
self made a tour of speech-making through the South- 
ern States, in which, while denouncing the political 
views of both Lincoln and Breckinridge, he neverthe- 
less openly declared, in response to direct questions, 
that no grievance could justify disunion, and that he 
was ready "to put the hemp around the neck and hang 
any man who would raise the arm of resistance to the 
constituted authorities of the country." 

During the early part of the campaign the more ex- 
treme Southern fire-eaters abated somewhat of their 
violent menaces of disunion. Between the Charleston 
and the Baltimore Democratic conventions an address 
published by Jefferson Davis and other prominent 
leaders had explained that the seventeen Democratic 
States which had voted at Charleston for the seceders' 
platform could, if united with Pennsylvania alone, 
elect the Democratic nominees against all opposition. 
This hope doubtless floated before their eyes like a will- 
o'-the-wisp until the October elections dispelled all pos- 
sibility of securing Pennsylvania for Breckinridge. 



FUSION 157 

From that time forward there began a renewal of dis- 
union threats, which, by their constant increase 
throughout the South, prepared the public mind of 
that section for the coming secession. 

As the chances of Republican success gradually grew 
stronger, an undercurrent of combination developed it- 
self among those politicians of the three opposing 
parties more devoted to patronage than principle, to 
bring about the fusion of Lincoln's opponents on 
some agreed ratio of a division of the spoils. Such a 
combination made considerable progress in the three 
Northern States of New York, Pennsylvania, and 
New Jersey. It appears to have been engineered 
mainly by the Douglas faction, though, it must be said 
to his credit, against the open and earnest protest of 
Douglas himself. But the thrifty plotters cared little 
for his disapproval. 

By the secret manipulations of conventions and com- 
mittees a fusion electoral ticket was formed in New 
York, made up of adherents of the three different 
factions in the following proportion : Douglas, eigh- 
teen; Bell, ten; Breckinridge, seven; and the whole 
opposition vote of the State of New York was cast for 
this fusion ticket. The same tactics were pursued in 
Pennsylvania, where, however, the agreement was not 
so openly avowed. One third of the Pennsylvania fu- 
sion electoral candidates were pledged to Douglas ; the 
division of the remaining two thirds between Bell and 
Breckinridge was not made public. The bulk of the 
Pennsylvania opposition vote was cast for this fusion 
ticket, but a respectable percentage refused to be bar- 
gained away, and voted directly for Douglas or Bell. 
In New Jersey a definite agreement was reached by the 
managers, and an electoral ticket formed, composed of 
two adherents of Bell, two of Breckinridge, and three 



158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Douglas; and in this State a practical result was 
effected by the movement. A fraction of the Douglas 
voters formed a straight electoral ticket, adopting the 
three Douglas candidates on the fusion ticket, and by 
this action these three Douglas electors received a ma- 
jority vote in New Jersey. On the whole, however, 
the fusion movement proved ineffectual to defeat Lin- 
coln, and, indeed, it would not have done so even had 
the fusion electoral tickets received a majority in all 
three of the above-named States. 

The personal habits and surroundings of Mr. Lin- 
coln were varied somewhat, though but slightly, during 
the whole of this election summer. Naturally, he with- 
drew at once from active work, leaving his law office 
and his whole law business to his partner, William H. 
Herndon; while his friends installed him in the gov- 
ernor's room in the State House at Springfield, which 
was not otherwise needed during the absence of the 
legislature. Here he spent the time during the usual 
business hours of the day, attended only by his private 
secretary, Mr. Nicolay. Friends and strangers alike 
were thus able to visit him freely and without cere- 
mony, and they availed themselves largely of the op- 
portunity. Few, if any, went away without being 
favorably impressed by his hearty Western greeting, 
and the frank sincerity of his manner and conversation, 
in which, naturally, all subjects of controversy were 
courteously and instinctively avoided by both the can- 
didate and his visitors. 

By none was this free, neighborly intercourse en- 
joyed more than by the old-time settlers of Sangamon 
and the adjoining counties, who came to revive the 
incidents and memories of pioneer days with one who 
could give them such thorough and appreciative in- 
terest and sympathy. He employed no literary bureau, 



CAMPAIGN HABITS 159 

wrote no public letters, made no set or impromptu 
speeches, except that once or twice during great polit- 
ical meetings at Springfield he uttered a few words 
of greeting and thanks to passing street processions. 
All these devices of propagandism he left to the leaders 
and committees of his adherents in their several States. 
Even the strictly confidential letters in which he indi- 
cated his advice on points in the progress of the cam- 
paign did not exceed a dozen in number; and when 
politicians came to interview him at Springfield, he 
received them in the privacy of his own home, and gen- 
erally their presence created little or no public notice. 
Cautious politician as he was, he did not permit himself 
to indulge in any over-confidence, but then, as always 
before, showed unusual skill in estimating political 
chances. Thus he wrote about a week after the Chi- 
cago convention : 

"So far as I can learn, the nominations start well 
everywhere; and, if they get no backset, it would seem 
as if they are going through." 

Again, on July 4: 

"Long before this you have learned who was nom- 
inated at Chicago. We know not what a day may 
bring forth, but to-day it looks as if the Chicago ticket 
will be elected." 

And on September 22, to a friend in Oregon : 

"No one on this side of the mountains pretends that 
any ticket can be elected by the people, unless it be ours. 
Hence, great efforts to combine against us are being 
made, which, however, as yet have not had much suc- 
cess. Besides what we see in the newspapers, I have 
a good deal of private correspondence; and, without 
giving details, I will only say it all looks very favorable 
to our success." 

His judgment was abundantly verified at the presi- 



160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dential election, which occurred upon November 6, 
i860. Lincoln electors were chosen in every one of the 
free States except New Jersey, where, as has already 
been stated, three Douglas electors received majorities 
because their names were on both the fusion ticket and 
the straight Douglas ticket; while the other four Re- 
publican electors in that State succeeded. Of the slave 
States, eleven chose Breckinridge electors, three of 
them Bell electors, and one of them — Missouri — Doug- 
las electors. As provided by law, the electors met in 
their several States on December 5, to officially cast 
their votes, and on February 13, 1861, Congress in 
joint session of the two Houses made the official count 
as follows : for Lincoln, one hundred and eighty ; for 
Breckinridge, seventy-two; for Bell, thirty-nine; and 
for Douglas, twelve; giving Lincoln a clear majority 
of fifty-seven in the whole electoral college. There- 
upon Breckinridge, who presided over the joint session, 
officially declared that Abraham Lincoln was duly 
elected President of the United States for four years, 
beginning March 4, 1861. 



XII 



Lincoln's Cabinet Program — Members from the South — 
Questions and Answers — Correspondence with Ste- 
phens — Action of Congress — Peace Convention — Prep- 
aration of the Inaugural — Lincoln's Farewell Address 
— The Journey to Washington — Lincoln's Midnight 
Journey 

i 

DURING the long presidential campaign of i860, 
between the Chicago* convention in the middle of 
May and the election at the beginning of November, 
Mr. Lincoln, relieved from all other duties, had 
watched political developments with very close atten- 
tion, not merely to discern the progress of his own 
chances, but, doubtless, also, much more seriously to 
deliberate upon the future in case he should be elected. 
But it was only when, on the night of November 6, 
he sat in the telegraph office at Springfield, from which 
all but himself and the operators were excluded, and 
read the telegrams as they fell from the wires, that 
little by little the accumulating Republican major- 
ities reported from all directions convinced him of the 
certainty of his success ; and with that conviction there 
fell upon him the overwhelming, almost crushing 
weight of his coming duties and responsibilities. He 
afterward related that in that supreme hour, grappling 
resolutely with the mighty problem before him, he 
practically completed the first essential act of his ad- 
« 161 



1 62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ministration, the selection of his future cabinet — the 
choice of the men who were to aid him. 

From what afterward occurred, we may easily infer 
the general principle which guided his choice. One of 
his strongest characteristics, as his speeches abundantly 
show, was his belief in the power of public opinion, 
and his respect for the popular will. That was to be 
found and to be wielded by the leaders of public senti- 
ment. In the present instance there were no truer 
representatives of that will than the men who had been 
prominently supported by the delegates to the Chicago 
convention for the presidential nominations. Of these 
he would take at least three, perhaps four, to compose 
one half of his cabinet. In selecting Seward, Chase, 
Bates, and Cameron, he could also satisfy two other 
points of the representative principle, the claims of lo- 
cality, and the elements of former party divisions now 
joined in the newly organized Republican party. With 
Seward from New York, Cameron from Pennsylvania, 
Chase from Ohio, and himself from Illinois, the four 
leading free States had each a representative. With 
Bates from Missouri, the South could not complain of 
being wholly excluded from the cabinet. New Eng- 
land was properly represented by Vice-President Ham- 
lin. When, after the inauguration, Smith from Indi- 
ana, Welles from Connecticut, and Blair from Mary- 
land were added to make up the seven cabinet members, 
the local distribution between East and West, North 
and South, was in no wise disturbed. It was, indeed, 
complained that in this arrangement there were four 
former Democrats, and only three former Whigs; to 
which Lincoln laughingly replied that he had been a 
Whig, and would be there to make the number even. 

It is not likely that this exact list was in Lincoln's 
mind on the night of the November election, but only 



LINCOLN'S CABINET PROGRAM 163 

the principal names in it; and much delay and some 
friction occurred before its completion. The post of 
Secretary of State was offered to Seward on Decem- 
ber 8. 

"Rumors have got into the newspapers," wrote Lin- 
coln, "to the effect that the department named above 
would be tendered you as a compliment, and with 
the expectation that you would decline it. I beg you 
to be assured that I have said nothing to justify these 
rumors. On the contrary, it has been my purpose, 
from the day of the nomination at Chicago, to assign 
you, by your leave, this place in the administration." 

Seward asked a few days for reflection, and then 
cordially accepted. Bates was tendered the Attorney- 
Generalship on December 15, while making a personal 
visit to Springfield. . Word had been meanwhile sent 
to Smith that he would probably be included. The 
assignment of places to Chase and Cameron worked 
less smoothly. Lincoln wrote Cameron a note on Jan- 
uary 3, saying he would nominate him for either Secre- 
tary of the Treasury or Secretary of War, he had not 
yet decided which ; and on the same day, in an inter- 
view with Chase, whom he had invited to Springfield, 
said to him : 

"I have done with you what I would not perhaps 
have ventured to do with any other man in the country 
— sent for you to ask whether you will accept the 
appointment of Secretary of the Treasury, without, 
however, being exactly prepared to offer it to you." 

They discussed the situation very fully, but without 
reaching a definite conclusion, agreeing to await the 
advice of friends. Meanwhile, the rumor that Cameron 
was to go into the cabinet excited such hot opposition 
that Lincoln felt obliged to recall his tender in a con- 
fidential letter; and asked him to write a public letter 



1 64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

declining the place. Instead of doing this, Cameron 
fortified himself with recommendations from promi- 
nent Pennsylvanians, and demonstrated that in his own 
State he had at least three advocates to one opponent. 

Pending the delay which this contest consumed, an- 
other cabinet complication found its solution. It had 
been warmly urged by conservatives that, in addition 
to Bates, another cabinet member should be taken from 
one of the Southern States. The difficulty of doing 
this had been clearly foreshadowed by Mr. Lincoln in a 
little editorial which he wrote for the Springfield 
"Journal" on December 12: 

"First. Is it known that any such gentleman of char- 
acter would accept a place in the cabinet ? 

"Second. If yea, on what terms does he surrender 
to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lincoln to him, on the political 
differences between them, or do they enter upon the 
administration in open opposition to each other?" 

It was very soon demonstrated that these differences 
were insurmountable. Through Mr. Seward, who was 
attending his senatorial duties at Washington, Mr. 
Lincoln tentatively offered a cabinet appointment suc- 
cessively to Gilmer of North Carolina, Hunt of Loui- 
siana, and Scott of Virginia, no one of whom had the 
courage to accept. 

Toward the end of the recent canvass, and still more 
since the election, Mr. Lincoln had received urgent let- 
ters to make some public declaration to reassure and 
pacify the South, especially the cotton States, which 
were manifesting a constantly growing spirit of rebel- 
lion. Most of such letters remained unanswered, but 
in a number of strictly confidental replies he explained 
the reasons for his refusal. 

"I appreciate your motive," he wrote October 23, 
"when you suggest the propriety of my writing for 



LETTERS TO STEPHENS 165 

the public something disclaiming all intention to inter- 
fere with slaves or slavery in the States; but, in my 
judgment, it would do no good. I have already done 
this many, many times ; and it is in print, and open to 
all who will read. Those who will not read or heed 
what I have already publicly said, would not read or 
heed a repetition of it. Tf they hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one 
rose from the dead.' " 

To the editor of the "Louisville Journal" he wrote 
October 29 : 

"For the good men of the South — and I regard the 
majority of them as such — I have no objection to 
repeat seventy and seven times. But I have bad men 
to deal with, both North and South ; men who are 
eager for something new upon which to base new mis- 
representations ; men who would like to frighten me, 
or at least to fix upon me the character of timidity and 
cowardice." 

Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who afterward 
became Confederate Vice-President, made a strong 
speech against secession in that State on November 14; 
and Mr. Lincoln wrote him a few lines asking for a 
revised copy of it. In the brief correspondence which 
ensued, Mr. Lincoln again wrote him under date of 
December 22 : 

"I fully appreciate the present peril the country is in, 
and the weight of responsibility on me. Do the people 
of the South really entertain fears that a Republican 
administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere 
with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If 
they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, 
I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such 
fears. The South would be in no more danger in this 
respect than it was in the days of Washington. I sup- 



1 66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pose, however, this does not meet the case. You think 
slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we 
think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, I 
suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial 
difference between us." 

So, also, replying a few days earlier in a long letter 
to Hon. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, to whom, 
as already stated, he offered a cabinet appointment, he 
said : 

"On the territorial question I am inflexible, as you 
see my position in the book. On that there is a differ- 
ence between you and us ; and it is the only substantial 
difference. You think slavery is right and ought to be 
extended ; we think it is wrong and ought to be re- 
stricted. For this neither has any just occasion to be 
angry with the other. As to the State laws, mentioned 
in your sixth question, I really know very little of 
them. I never have read one. If any of them are in 
conflict with the fugitive-slave clause, or any other part 
of the Constitution, I certainly shall be glad of their 
repeal ; but I could hardly be justified, as a citizen of 
Illinois, or as President of the United States, to rec- 
ommend the repeal of a statute of Vermont or South 
Carolina." 

Through his intimate correspondence with Mr. Sew- 
ard and personal friends in Congress, Mr. Lincoln was 
kept somewhat informed of the hostile temper of the 
Southern leaders, and that a tremendous pressure was 
being brought upon that body by timid conservatives 
and the commercial interests in the North to bring 
about some kind of compromise which would stay the 
progress of disunion; and on this point he sent an em- 
phatic monition to Representative Washburne on De- 
cember 1 3 : 

"Your long letter received. Prevent as far as pos- 



ACTION OF CONGRESS 167 

sible any of our friends from demoralizing themselves 
and their cause by entertaining propositions for com- 
promise of any sort on slavery extension. There is no 
possible compromise upon it but what puts us under 
again, and all our work to do over again. Whether it 
be a Missouri line or Eli Thayer's popular sovereignty, 
it is all the same. Let either be done, and immediately 
filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On 
that point hold firm as a chain of steel." 

Between the day when a President is elected by pop- 
ular vote and that on which he is officially inaugu- 
rated there exists an interim of four long months, 
during which he has no more direct power in the affairs 
of government than any private citizen. However anx- 
iously Mr. Lincoln might watch the development of 
public events at Washington and in the cotton States ; 
whatever appeals might come to him through inter- 
views or correspondence, no positive action of any kind 
was within his power, beyond an occasional word of 
advice or suggestion. The position of the Republican 
leaders in Congress was not much better. Until the 
actual secession of States, and the departure of their 
representatives, they were in a minority in the Senate ; 
while the so-called South Americans and Anti-Lecomp- 
ton Democrats held the balance of power in the House. 
The session was mainly consumed in excited, profitless 
discussion. Both the Senate and House appointed 
compromise committees, which met and labored, but 
could find no common ground of agreement. A peace 
convention met and deliberated at Washington, with 
no practical result, except to waste the powder for a 
salute of one hundred guns over a sham report to 
which nobody paid the least attention. 

Throughout this period Mr. Lincoln was by no 
means idle. Besides the many difficulties he had to 



168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

overcome in completing his cabinet, he devoted himself 
to writing his inaugural address. Withdrawing him- 
self some hours each day from his ordinary receptions, 
he went to a quiet room on the second floor of the store 
occupied by his brother-in-law, on the south side of the 
public square in Springfield, where he could think and 
write in undisturbed privacy. When, after abundant 
reflection and revision, he had finished the document, 
he placed it in the hands of Mr. William H. Bailhache, 
one of the editors of the "Illinois State Journal," who 
locked himself and a single compositor into the com- 
posing-room of the "Journal." Here, in Mr. Bail- 
hache's presence, it was set up, proof taken and read, 
and a dozen copies printed ; after which the types were 
again immediately distributed. The alert newspaper 
correspondents in Springfield, who saw Mr. Lincoln 
every day as usual, did not obtain the slightest hint of 
what was going on. 

Having completed his arrangements, Mr. Lincoln 
started on his journey to Washington on February n, 
1861, on a special train, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln 
and their three children, his two private secretaries, 
and a suite of about a dozen personal friends. Mr. 
Seward had suggested that in view of the feverish con- 
dition of public affairs, he should come a week earlier; 
but Mr. Lincoln allowed himself only time enough 
comfortably to fill the appointments he had made to 
visit the capitals and principal cities of the States on his 
route, in accordance with non-partizan invitations from 
their legislatures and mayors, which he had accepted. 
Standing on the front platform of the car, as the con- 
ductor was about to pull the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln 
made the following brief and pathetic address of fare- 
well, to his friends and neighbors of Springfield— the 
last time his voice was ever to be heard in the city 
which had been his home for so many years : 



FAREWELL ADDRESS 169 

"My friends : No one, not in my situation, can ap- 
preciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this 
place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every- 
thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and 
have passed from a young to an old man. Here my 
children have been born, and one is buried. I now 
leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
with a task before me greater than that which rested 
upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. 
With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him 
who can go with me, and remain with you, and be 
everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all 
will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I 
hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you 
an affectionate farewell." 

It was the beginning of a memorable journey. On 
the whole route from Springfield to Washington, at 
almost every station, even the smallest, was gathered 
a crowd of people in hope to catch a glimpse of the face 
of the President-elect, or, at least, to see the flying train. 
At the larger stopping-places these gatherings were 
swelled to thousands, and in the great cities into almost 
unmanageable assemblages. Everywhere there were 
vociferous calls for Air. Lincoln, and, if he showed 
himself, for a speech. Whenever there was sufficient 
time, he would step to the rear platform of the car and 
bow his acknowledgments as the train was moving 
away, and sometimes utter a few words of thanks and 
greeting. At the capitals of Indiana, Ohio, New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as also in the cities of 
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, and Phila- 
delphia, a halt was made for one or two days, and a 
program was carried out of a formal visit and brief 
address to each house of the legislature, street proces- 
sions, large receptions in the evening, and other similar 



i7o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ceremonies; and in each of them there was an unpre- 
cedented outpouring of the people to take advantage 
of every opportunity to see and to hear the future Chief 
Magistrate of the Union. 

Party foes as well as party friends made up these 
expectant crowds. The public suspense was at a de- 
gree of tension which rendered every eye and ear eager 
to catch even the slightest indication of the thoughts 
or intentions of the man who was to be the official 
guide of the nation in a crisis the course and end of 
which even the wisest dared not predict. In the twenty 
or thirty brief addresses delivered by Mr. Lincoln on 
this journey, he observed the utmost caution of utter- 
ance and reticence of declaration; yet the shades of 
meaning in his carefully chosen sentences were enough 
to show how alive he was to the trials and dangers con- 
fronting his administration, and to inspire hope and 
confidence in his judgment. He repeated that he 
regarded the public demonstrations not as belonging 
to himself, but to the high office with which the peo- 
ple had clothed him; and that if he failed, they could 
four years later substitute a better man in his place; 
and in his very first address, at Indianapolis, he thus 
emphasized their reciprocal duties : 

"If the union of these States and the liberties of this 
people shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of 
fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty mil- 
lions of people who inhabit these United States, and to 
their posterity in all coming time. It is your business to 
rise up and preserve the Union and liberty for your- 
selves, and not for me. ... I appeal to you again 
to constantly bear in mind that not with politicians, 
not with Presidents, not with office-seekers, but with 
you, is the question, Shall the Union and shall the 
liberties of this country be preserved to the latest gen- 
erations?" 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 171 

Many salient and interesting quotations could be 
made from his other addresses, but a comparatively 
few sentences will be sufficient to enable the reader 
to infer what was likely to be his ultimate conclusion 
and action. In his second speech at Indianapolis he 
asked the question : 

"On what rightful principle may a State, being not 
more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and 
population, break up the nation, and then coerce a pro- 
portionally larger subdivision of itself in the most ar- 
bitrary way?" 

At Steubenville: 

"If the majority should not rule, who would be the 
judge? Where is such a judge to be found? We 
should all be bound by the majority of the American 
people — if not, then the minority must control. Would 
that be right?" 

At Trenton : 

"I shall do all that may be in my power to promote 
a peaceful settlement of all our difficulties. The man 
does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am, 
none who would do more to preserve it, but it may be 
necessary to put the foot down firmly." 

At Harrisburg: 

"While I am exceedingly gratified to see the mani- 
festation upon your streets of your military force here, 
and exceedingly gratified at your promise to use that 
force upon a proper emergency — while I make these 
acknowledgments, I desire to repeat, in order to pre- 
clude any possible misconstruction, that I do most sin- 
cerely hope that we shall have no use for them; that 
it will never become their duty to shed blood, and most 
especially never to shed fraternal blood. I promise 
that so far as I may have wisdom to direct, if so painful 
a result shall in any wise be brought about, it shall be 
through no fault of mine." 



172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

While Mr. Lincoln was yet at Philadelphia, he was 
met by Mr. Frederick W. Seward, son of Senator 
Seward, who brought him an important communica- 
tion from his father and General Scott at Washing- 
ton. About the beginning of the year serious appre- 
hension had been felt lest a sudden uprising of the 
secessionists in Virginia and Maryland might endea- 
vor to gain possession of the national capital. An 
investigation by a committee of Congress found no 
active military preparation to exist for such a purpose, 
but considerable traces of disaffection and local con- 
spiracy in Baltimore; and, to guard against such an 
outbreak, President Buchanan had permitted his Secre- 
tary of War, Mr. Holt, to call General Scott to Wash- 
ington and charge him with the safety of the city, not 
only at that moment, but also during the counting of 
the presidential returns in February, and the coming 
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. For this purpose Gen- 
eral Scott had concentrated at Washington a few com- 
panies from the regular army, and also, in addition, 
had organized and armed about nine hundred men of 
the militia of the District of Columbia. 

In connection with these precautions, Colonel Stone, 
who commanded these forces, had kept himself in- 
formed about the disaffection in Baltimore, through 
the agency of the New York police department. The 
communication brought by young Mr. Seward con- 
tained, besides notes from his father and General Scott, 
a short report from Colonel Stone, stating that there 
had arisen within the past few days imminent danger 
of violence to and the assassination of Mr. Lincoln in 
his passage through Baltimore, should the time of that 
passage be known. 

"All risk," he suggested, "might be easily avoided by 
a change in the traveling arrangements which would 



MIDNIGHT JOURNEY 173 

bring Mr. Lincoln and a portion of his party through 
Baltimore by a night train without previous notice." 

The seriousness of this information was doubled by 
the fact that Mr. Lincoln had, that same day, held an 
interview with a prominent Chicago detective who had 
been for some weeks employed by the president of the 
Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore railway to in- 
vestigate the danger to their property and trains from 
the Baltimore secessionists. The investigations of this 
detective, a Mr. Pinkerton. had been carried on with- 
out the knowledge of the New York detective, and he 
reported not identical, but almost similar, conditions 
of insurrectionary feeling and danger, and recom- 
mended the same precaution. 
. Mr. Lincoln very earnestly debated the situation 
with his intimate personal friend, Hon. N. B. Judd of 
Chicago, perhaps the most active and influential mem- 
ber of his suite, who advised him to proceed to Wash- 
ington that same evening on the eleven-o'clock train. 
"I cannot go to-night," replied Mr. Lincoln; "I have 
promised to raise the flag over Independence Hall to- 
morrow morning, ami to visit the legislature at Harris- 
burg. Beyond that I have no engagements." 

The railroad schedule by which Mr. Lincoln had 
hitherto been traveling included a direct trip from 
Harrisburg, through Baltimore, to Washington on 
Saturday, February 23. When the Harrisburg ceremo- 
nies had been concluded on the afternoon of the 22d, 
the danger and the proposed change of program were 
for the first time fully laid before a confidential meet- 
ing of the prominent members of Mr. Lincoln's suite. 
Reasons were strongly urged both for and against the 
plan; but Mr. Lincoln finally decided and explained 
that while he himself was not afraid he would be 
assassinated, nevertheless, since the possibility of dan- 



174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ger had been made known from two entirely indepen- 
dent sources, and officially communicated to him by 
his future prime minister and the general of the Amer- 
ican armies, he was no longer at liberty to disregard it ; 
that it was not the question of his private life, but the 
regular and orderly transmission of the authority of 
the government of the United States in the face of 
threatened revolution, which he had no right to put 
in the slightest jeopardy. He would, therefore, carry 
out the plan, the full details of which had been ar- 
ranged with the railroad officials. 

Accordingly, that same evening, he, with a single 
companion, Colonel W. H. Lamon, took a car from 
Harrisburg back to Philadelphia, at which place, about 
midnight, they boarded the through train from New 
York to Washington, and without recognition or any 
untoward incident passed quietly through Baltimore, 
and reached the capital about daylight on the morning 
of February 23, where they were met by Mr. Seward 
and Representative Washburne of Illinois, and con- 
ducted to Willard's Hotel. 

When Mr. Lincoln's departure from Harrisburg be- 
came known, a reckless newspaper correspondent tele- 
graphed to New York the ridiculous invention that he 
traveled disguised in a Scotch cap and long military 
cloak. There was not one word of truth in the absurd 
statement. Mr. Lincoln's family and suite proceeded 
to Washington by the originally arranged train and 
schedule, and witnessed great crowds in the streets of 
Baltimore, but encountered neither turbulence nor in- 
civility of any kind. There was now, of course, no 
occasion for any, since the telegraph had definitely an- 
nounced that the President-elect was already in Wash- 
ington. 



XIII 

The Secession Movement — South Carolina Secession — 
Buchanan's Neglect — Disloyal Cabinet Members — 
Washington Central Cabal — Anderson's Transfer to 
Sumter — Star of the West — Montgomery Rebellion — 
Davis and Stephens — Corner-stone Theory — Lincoln 
Inaugurated — His Inaugural Address — Lincoln's Cabi- 
net — The Question of Sumter — Seward's Memorandum 
— Lincoln's Answer — Bombardment of Sumter — An- 
derson's Capitulation 

IT is not the province of these chapters to relate in 
detail the course of the secession movement in the 
cotton States in the interim which elapsed between the 
election and inauguration of President Lincoln. Still 
less can space be given to analyze and set forth the 
lamentable failure of President Buchanan to employ 
the executive authority and power of the government 
to prevent it, or even to hinder its development, by any 
vigorous opposition or adequate protest. The deter- 
mination of South Carolina to secede was announced 
by the governor of that State a month before the presi- 
dential election, and on the day before the election he 
sent the legislature of the State a revolutionary mes- 
sage to formally inaugurate it. From that time for- 
ward the whole official machinery of the State not 
only led, but forced the movement which culminated 
on December 20 in the ordinance of secession by the 
South Carolina convention. 
This official revolution in South Carolina was quickly 
175 



176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

imitated by similar official revolutions ending in seces- 
sion ordinances in the States of Mississippi, on January 
9, 1861 ; Florida, January 10; Alabama, January 11; 
Georgia, January 19; Louisiana, January 26; and by 
a still bolder usurpation in Texas, culminating on 
February 1. From the day of the presidential election 
all these proceedings were known probably more fully 
to President Buchanan than to the general public, be- 
cause many of the actors were his personal and party 
friends ; while almost at their very beginning he became 
aware that three members of his cabinet were secretly 
or openly abetting and promoting them by their official 
influence and power. 

Instead of promptly dismissing these unfaithful ser- 
vants, he retained one of them a month, and the others 
twice that period, and permitted them so far to influ- 
ence his official conduct, that in his annual message 
to Congress he announced the fallacious and paradox- 
ical doctrine that though a State had no right to 
secede, the Federal government had no right to coerce 
her to remain in the Union. 

Nor could he justify his non-action by the excuse 
that contumacious speeches and illegal resolves of par- 
liamentary bodies might be tolerated under the Amer- 
ican theory of free assemblage and free speech. Al- 
most from the beginning of the secession movement, it 
was accompanied from time to time by overt acts both 
of treason and war; notably, by the occupation and 
seizure by military order and force of the seceding 
States, of twelve or fifteen harbor forts, one extensive 
navy-yard, half a dozen arsenals, three mints, four im- 
portant custom-houses, three revenue cutters, and a 
variety of miscellaneous Federal property; for all of 
which insults to the flag, and infractions of the sov- 
ereignty of the United States, President Buchanan 



ANDERSON'S TRANSFER TO SUMTER 177 

could recommend no more efficacious remedy or redress 
than to ask the voters of the country to reverse their de- 
cision given at the presidential election, and to appoint 
a day of fasting and prayer on which to implore the 
Most High "to remove from our hearts that false pride 
of opinion which would impel us to persevere in wrong 
for the sake of consistency." 

Nor must mention be omitted of the astounding phe- 
nomenon that, encouraged by President Buchanan's 
doctrine of non-coercion and purpose of non-action, a 
central cabal of Southern senators and representatives 
issued from Washington, on December 14, their public 
proclamation of the duty of secession; their executive 
committee using one of the rooms of the Capitol build- 
ing itself as the headquarters of the conspiracy and re- 
bellion they were appointed to lead and direct. 

During the month of December, while the active 
treason of cotton-State officials and the fatal neglect 
of the Federal executive were in their most damaging 
and demoralizing stages, an officer of the United States 
army had the high courage and distinguished honor to 
give the ever-growing revolution its first effective 
check. Major Robert Anderson, though a Kentuckian 
by birth and allied by marriage to a Georgia family, 
was, late in November, placed in command of the Fed- 
eral forts in Charleston harbor; and having repeatedly 
reported that his little garrison of sixty men was in- 
sufficient for the defense of Fort Moultrie, and vainly 
asked for reinforcements which were not sent him, 
he suddenly and secretly, on the night after Christmas, 
transferred his command from the insecure position 
of Moultrie to the strong and unapproachable walls of 
Fort Sumter, midway in the mouth of Charleston 
harbor, where he could not be assailed by the raw 
Charleston militia companies that had for weeks been 



178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

threatening him with a storming assault. In this 
stronghold, surrounded on all sides by water, he loyally- 
held possession for the government and sovereignty of 
the United States. 

The surprised and baffled rage of the South Caro- 
lina rebels created a crisis at Washington that resulted 
in the expulsion of the President's treacherous coun- 
selors and the reconstruction of Mr. Buchanan's cab- 
inet to unity and loyalty. The new cabinet, though 
unable to obtain President Buchanan's consent to 
aggressive measures to reestablish the Federal author- 
ity, was, nevertheless, able to prevent further conces- 
sions to the insurrection, and to effect a number of im- 
portant defensive precautions, among which was the 
already mentioned concentration of a small military 
force to protect the national capital. 

Meanwhile, the governor of South Carolina had be- 
gun the erection of batteries to isolate and besiege Fort 
Sumter ; and the first of these, on a sand-spit of Morris 
Island commanding the main ship-channel, by a few 
shots turned back, on January 9, the merchant steamer 
Star of the West, in which General Scott had attempted 
to send a reinforcement of two hundred recruits to 
Major Anderson. Battery building was continued 
with uninterrupted energy until a triangle of siege 
works was established on the projecting points of 
neighboring islands, mounting a total of thirty guns 
and seventeen mortars, manned and supported by a 
volunteer force of from four to six thousand men. 

Military preparation, though not on so extensive or 
definite a scale, was also carried on in the other revolted 
States; and while Mr. Lincoln was making his mem- 
orable journey from Springfield to Washington, tele- 
grams were printed in the newspapers, from day to day, 
showing that their delegates had met at Montgomery, 



CORNER-STONE THEORY 179 

Alabama, formed a provisional congress, and adopted 
a constitution and government under the title of The 
Confederate States of America, of which they elected 
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi President, and Alexan- 
der H. Stephens of Georgia Vice-President. 

It needs to be constantly borne in mind that the be- 
ginning of this vast movement was not a spontaneous 
revolution, but a chronic conspiracy. ''The secession 
of South Carolina," truly said one of the chief actors, 
"is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced 
by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of 
the fugitive-slave law. It is a matter which has been 
gathering head for thirty years." The central motive 
and dominating object of the revolution was frankly 
avowed by Vice-President Stephens in a speech he 
made at Savannah a few weeks after his inauguration : 

"The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Jeffer- 
son] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of 
the formation of the old Constitution, were that the 
enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws 
of nature ; that it was wrong in principle, socially, mor- 
ally, and politically. . . . Our new government is 
founded upon exactly the opposite idea ; its foundations 
are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that 
the negro is not equal to the white man ; that slavery 
— subordination to the superior race — is his natural 
and normal condition. This, our new government, is 
the first, in the history of the world, based upon this 
great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." 

In the week which elapsed between Mr. Lincoln's ar- 
rival in Washington and the day of inauguration, he 
exchanged the customary visits of ceremony with 
President Buchanan, his cabinet, the Supreme Court, 
the two Houses of Congress, and other dignitaries. In 
his rooms at Willard's Hotel he also held consultations 



180 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

with leading Republicans about the final composition 
of his cabinet and pressing questions of public policy. 
Careful preparations had been made for the inaugura- 
tion, and under the personal eye of General Scott the 
military force in the city was ready instantly to sup- 
press any attempt to disturb the peace or quiet of the 
day. 

On March 4 the outgoing and incoming Presidents 
rode side by side in a carriage from the Executive 
Mansion to the Capitol and back, escorted by an im- 
posing military and civic procession; and an immense 
throng of spectators heard the new Executive read his 
inaugural address from the east portico of the Capitol. 
He stated frankly that a disruption of the Federal 
Union was being formidably attempted, and discussed 
dispassionately the theory and illegality of secession. 
He held that the Union was perpetual ; that resolves 
and ordinances of disunion are legally void; and an- 
nounced that to the extent of his ability he would faith- 
fully execute the laws of the Union in all the States. 
The power confided to him would be used to hold, 
occupy, and possess the property and places belonging 
to the government, and to collect the duties and im- 
posts. But beyond what might be necessary for these 
objects there would be no invasion, no using of force 
against or among the people anywhere. Where hostil- 
ity to the United States in any interior locality should 
be so great and universal as to prevent competent resi- 
dent citizens from holding the Federal offices, there 
would be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers 
among them for that object. The mails, unless re- 
pelled, would continue to be furnished in all parts of 
the Union; and this course would be followed until 
current events and experience should show a change 
to be necessary. To the South he made an earnest 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 181 

plea against the folly of disunion, and in favor of 
maintaining peace and fraternal good will; declaring 
that their property, peace, and personal security were 
in no danger from a Republican administration. 

"One section of our country believes slavery is right 
and ought to be extended," he said, "while the other 
believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended; that 
is the only substantial dispute. . . . Physically 
speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our 
respective sections from each other, nor build an im- 
passable wall between them. A husband and wife may 
be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the 
reach of each other ; but the different parts of our coun- 
try cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to 
face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must 
continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make 
that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfac- 
tory after separation than before? Can aliens make 
treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can trea- 
ties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than 
laws can among friends ? Suppose you go to war, you 
cannot fight always ; and when, after much loss on both 
sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the 
identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are 
again upon you. ... In your hands, my dissatis- 
fied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
tous issue of civil war. The government will not 
assail you. You can have no conflict without being 
yourselves the aggressors. ... I am loath to close. 
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be 
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must 
not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords 
of memory, stretching from every battle-field and 
patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of 



1 82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature." 

But the peaceful policy here outlined was already 
more difficult to follow than Mr. Lincoln was aware. 
On the morning after inauguration the Secretary of 
War brought to his notice freshly received letters from 
Major Anderson, commanding Fort Sumter in Charles- 
ton harbor, announcing that in the course of a few 
weeks the provisions of the garrison would be ex- 
hausted, and therefore an evacuation or surrender 
would become necessary, unless the fort were relieved 
by supplies or reinforcements; and this information 
was accompanied by the written opinions of the officers 
that to relieve the fort would require a well-appointed 
army of twenty thousand men. 

The new President had appointed as his cabinet 
William H. Seward, Secretary of State; Salmon P. 
Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron, 
Secretary of War; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the 
Navy; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; 
Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General; and Edward 
Bates, Attorney-General. The President and his offi- 
cial advisers at once called into counsel the highest 
military and naval officers of the Union to consider the 
new and pressing emergency revealed by the unex- 
pected news from Sumter. The professional experts 
were divided in opinion. Relief by a force of twenty 
thousand men was clearly out of the question. No 
such Union army existed, nor could one be created 
within the limit of time. The officers of the navy 
thought that men and supplies might be thrown into the 
fort by swift-going vessels, while on the other hand the 
army officers believed that such an expedition would 
surely be destroyed by the formidable batteries which 
the insurgents had erected to close the harbor. In view 



THE QUESTION OF SUMTER 183 

of all the conditions, Lieutenant-General Scott, general- 
in-chief of the army, recommended the evacuation of 
the fort as a military necessity. 

President Lincoln thereupon asked the several mem- 
bers of his cabinet the written question : "Assuming 
it to be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, under 
all the circumstances is it wise to attempt it?" Only 
two members replied in the affirmative, while the other 
five argued against the attempt, holding that the coun- 
try would recognize that the evacuation of the fort 
was not an indication of policy, but a necessity created 
by the neglect of the old administration. Under this 
advice, the President withheld his decision until he 
could gather further information. 

Meanwhile, three commissioners had arrived from 
the provisional government at Montgomery, Alabama, 
under instructions to endeavor to negotiate a dc facto 
and de jure recognition of the independence of the 
Confederate States. They were promptly informed 
by Mr. Seward that he could not receive them ; that he 
did not see in the Confederate States a rightful and 
accomplished revolution and an independent nation ; 
and that he was not at liberty to recognize the com- 
missioners as diplomatic agents, or to hold correspon- 
dence with them. Failing in this direct application, 
they made further efforts through Mr. Justice Camp- 
bell of the Supreme Court, as a friendly intermediary, 
who came to Seward in the guise of a loyal official, 
though his correspondence with Jefferson Davis soon 
revealed a treasonable intent; and, replying to Camp- 
bell's earnest entreaties that peace should be main- 
tained, Seward informed him confidentially that the 
military status at Charleston would not be changed 
without notice to the governor of South Carolina. On 
March 29 a cabinet meeting for the second time dis- 



1 84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cussed the question of Sumter. Four of the seven 
members now voted in favor of an attempt to supply 
the fort with provisions, and the President signed a 
memorandum order to prepare certain ships for such 
an expedition, under the command of Captain G. V. 
Fox. 

So far, Mr. Lincoln's new duties as President of the 
United States had not in any wise put him at a disad- 
vantage with his constitutional advisers. Upon the 
old question of slavery he was as well informed and 
had clearer convictions and purposes than either Sew- 
ard or Chase. And upon the newer question of 
secession, and the immediate decision about Fort 
Sumter which it involved, the members of his cabinet 
were, like himself, compelled to rely on the profes- 
sional advice of experienced army and navy officers. 
Since these differed radically in their opinions, the 
President's own powers of perception and logic were 
as capable of forming a correct decision as men who 
had been governors and senators. He had reached 
at least a partial decision in the memorandum he gave 
Fox to prepare ships for the Sumter expedition. 

It must therefore have been a great surprise to the 
President when, on April i, Secretary of State Seward 
handed him a memorandum setting forth a number of 
most extraordinary propositions. For a full enumera- 
tion of the items the reader must carefully study the 
entire document, which is printed below in a foot-note j 1 

i Some Thoughts for the culpable, and it has even been mi- 
President's Consideration. avoidable. The presence of the 
April i, 1861. Senate, with the need to meet ap- 

plications for patronage, have pre- 

First. We are at the end of a vented attention to other and more 

month's administration, and yet grave matters. 

without a policy, either domestic Third. But further delay to 

or foreign. adopt and prosecute our policies 

Second. This, however, is not for both domestic and foreign af- 



SEWARD'S MEMORANDUM 



185 



but the principal points for which it had evidently been 
written and presented can be given in a few sentences. 
A month has elapsed, and the administration has 
neither a domestic nor a foreign policy. The adminis- 
tration must at once adopt and carry out a novel, radi- 
cal, and aggressive policy. It must cease saying a 
word about slavery, and raise a great outcry about 
Union. It must declare war against France and Spain, 



fairs would not only bring scandal 
on the administration, but danger 
upon the country. 

Fourth. To do this we must 
dismiss the applicants for office. 
But how? I suggest that we make 
the local appointments forthwith, 
leaving foreign or general ones for 
ulterior and occasional action. 

Fifth. The policy at home. I 
am aware that my views are singu- 
lar, and perhaps not sufficiently ex- 
plained. My system is built upon 
this idea as a ruling one, namely, 
that we must 

CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE 
THE PUBLIC FROM ONE UPON 
SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, for 
a question upon union OR dis- 
union. 

In other words, from what would 
be regarded as a party question, to 
one of Patriotism or Union. 

The occupation or evacuation of 
Fort Sumter, although not in fact 
a slavery or a party question, is so 
regarded. Witness the temper 
manifested by the Republicans in 
the free States, and even by the 
Union men in the South. 

I would therefore terminate it as 
a safe means for changing the issue. 
I deem it fortunate that the last ad- 
ministration created the necessity. 

For the rest, I would simulta- 
neously defend and reinforce all the 
ports in the Gulf, and have the 
navy recalled from foreign stations 
to be prepared for a blockade. Put 



the island of Key West under mar- 
tial law. 

This will raise distinctly the 
question of Union or Disunion. 
I would maintain every fort and 
possession in the South. 

For Foreign Nations. 

I would demand explanations 
from Spain and France, categor- 
ically, at once. 

I would seek explanations from 
Great Britain and Russia, and send 
agents into Canada, Mexico, and 
Central America, to rouse a vigor- 
ous continental spirit of indepen- 
dence on this continent against Eu- 
ropean intervention. 

.And, if satisfactory explanations 
are not received from Spain and 
France, 

Would convene Congress and de- 
clare war against them. 

But whatever policy we adopt, 
there must be an energetic prose- 
cution of it. 

For this purpose it must be 
somebody's business to pursue and 
direct it incessantly. 

Either the President must do it 
himself, and be all the while active 
in it, or 

Devolve it on some member of his 
cabinet. Once adopted, debates on 
it must end, and all agree and abide. 

It is not in my especial province. 

But I neither seek to evade nor 
assume responsibility. 



1 86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and combine and organize all the governments of North 
and South America in a crusade to enforce the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. This policy once adopted, it must be the 
business of some one incessantly to pursue it. "It is 
not in my especial province," wrote Mr. Seward ; "but 
I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility." 
This phrase, which is a key to the whole memorandum, 
enables the reader easily to translate its meaning into 
something like the following : 

After a month's trial, you, Mr. Lincoln, are a failure 
as President. The country is in desperate straits, and 
must use a desperate remedy. That remedy is to sub- 
merge the South Carolina insurrection in a continental 
war. Some new man must take the executive helm, 
and wield the undivided presidential authority. I 
should have been nominated at Chicago, and elected in 
November, but am willing to take your place and per- 
form your duties. 

Why William H. Seward, who is fairly entitled to 
rank as a great statesman, should have written this 
memorandum and presented it to Mr. Lincoln, has 
never been explained ; nor is it capable of explanation. 
Its suggestions were so visionary, its reasoning so 
fallacious, its assumptions so unwarranted, its conclu- 
sions so malapropos, that it falls below critical exam- 
ination. Had Mr. Lincoln been an envious or a resent- 
ful man, he could not have wished for a better occasion 
to put a rival under his feet. 

The President doubtless considered the incident one 
of phenomenal strangeness, but it did not in the least 
disturb his unselfish judgment or mental equipoise. 
There was in his answer no trace of excitement or 
passion. He pointed out in a few sentences of simple, 
quiet explanation that what the administration had 
done was exactly a foreign and domestic policy which 



LINCOLN'S ANSWER 187 

the Secretary of State himself had concurred in and 
helped to frame. Only, that Mr. Seward proposed 
to go further and give up Sumter. Upon the central 
suggestion that some one mind must direct, Mr. Lin- 
coln wrote with simple dignity: 

"If this must be done, I must do it. When a gen- 
eral line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no 
danger of its being changed without good reason, or 
continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate ; still, 
upon points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose 
I am entitled to have, the advice of all the cabinet." 

Mr. Lincoln's unselfish magnanimity is the central 
marvel of the whole affair. His reply ended the argu- 
ment. Mr. Seward doubtless saw at once how com- 
pletely he had put himself in the President's power. 
Apparently, neither of the men ever again alluded to 
the incident. No other persons except Mr. Seward's 
son and the President's private secretary ever saw the 
correspondence, or knew of the occurrence. The Presi- 
dent put the papers away in an envelop, and no word 
of the affair came to the public until a quarter of a 
century later, when the details were published in Mr. 
Lincoln's biography. In one mind, at least, there was 
no further doubt that the cabinet had a master, for only 
some weeks later Mr. Seward is known to have writ- 
ten : "There is but one vote in the cabinet, and that is 
cast by the President." This mastery Mr. Lincoln 
retained with a firm dignity throughout his adminis- 
tration. When, near the close of the war, he sent Mr. 
Seward to meet the rebel commissioners at the Hamp- 
ton Roads conference, he finished his short letter of 
instructions with the imperative sentence : "You will 
not assume to definitely consummate anything." 

From this strange episode our narrative must return 
to the question of Fort Sumter. On April 4, official 



188 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

notice was sent to Major Anderson of the coming re- 
lief, with the instruction to hold out till the eleventh or 
twelfth if possible; but authorizing him to capitulate 
whenever it might become necessary to save himself 
and command. Two days later the President sent a 
special messenger with written notice to the governor 
of South Carolina that an attempt would be made to 
supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if 
such attempt were not resisted, no further effort would 
be made to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, with- 
out further notice, or unless in case of an attack on the 
fort. 

The building of batteries around Fort Sumter had 
been begun, under the orders of Governor Pickens, 
about the first of January, and continued with industry 
and energy; and about the first of March General 
Beauregard, an accomplished engineer officer, was sent 
by the Confederate government to take charge of and 
complete the works. On April I he telegraphed to 
Montgomery: "Batteries ready to open Wednesday 
or Thursday. What instructions?" 

At this point, the Confederate authorities at Mont- 
gomery found themselves face to face with the fatal 
alternative either to begin war or to allow their rebel- 
lion to collapse. Their claim to independence was 
denied, their commissioners were refused a hearing; 
yet not an angry word, provoking threat, nor harm- 
ful act had come from President Lincoln. He had 
promised them peace, protection, freedom from irri- 
tation ; had offered them the benefit of the mails. Even 
now, all he proposed to do was — not to send guns or 
ammunition or men to Sumter, but only bread and 
provisions to Anderson and his soldiers. His prudent 
policy placed them in the exact attitude described a 
month earlier in his inaugural: they could have no 



BOMBARDMENT OF SUMTER 189 

conflict without being themselves the aggressors. But 
the rebellion was organized by ambitious men with 
desperate intentions. A member of the Alabama legis- 
lature, present at Montgomery, said to Jefferson Davis 
and three members of his cabinet : "Gentlemen, unless 
you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, 
they will be back in the old Union in less than ten 
days." And the sanguinary advice was adopted. In 
answer to his question, "What instructions?" Beaure- 
gard on April 10 was ordered to demand the evacua- 
tion of Fort Sumter, and, in case of refusal, to reduce it. 

The demand was presented to Anderson, who replied 
that he would evacuate the fort by noon of April 15, 
unless assailed, or unless he received supplies or con- 
trolling instructions from his government. This an- 
swer being unsatisfactory to Beauregard, he sent 
Anderson notice that he would open fire on Sumter 
at 4:20 on the morning of April" 12. 

Promptly at the hour indicated the bombardment 
was begun. As has been related, the rebel siege-works 
were built on the points of the islands forming the har- 
bor, at distances varying from thirteen hundred to 
twenty-five hundred yards, and numbered nineteen 
batteries, with an armament of forty-seven guns, sup- 
ported by a land force of from four to six thousand 
volunteers. The disproportion between means of at- 
tack and defense was enormous. Sumter, though a 
work three hundred by three hundred and fifty feet in 
size, with well-constructed walls and casemates of 
brick, was in very meager preparation for such a con- 
flict. Of its forty-eight available guns, only twenty- 
one were in the casemates, twenty-seven being on the 
rampart en barbette. The garrison consisted of nine 
commissioned officers, sixty-eight non-commissioned 
officers and privates, eight musicians, and forty-three 



igo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

non-combatant workmen compelled by the besiegers 
to remain to hasten the consumption of provisions. 

Under the fire of the seventeen mortars in the rebel 
batteries, Anderson could reply only with a vertical 
fire from the guns of small caliber in his casemates, 
which was of no effect against the rebel bomb-proofs 
of sand and roofs of sloping railroad iron ; but, refrain- 
ing from exposing his men to serve his barbette guns, 
his garrison was also safe in its protecting casemates. 
It happened, therefore, that although the attack was 
spirited and the defense resolute, the combat went on 
for a day and a half without a single casualty. It came 
to an end on the second day only when the cartridges 
of the garrison were exhausted, and the red-hot shot 
from the rebel batteries had set the buildings used as 
officers' quarters on fire, creating heat and smoke that 
rendered further defense impossible. 

There was also the further discouragement that the 
expedition of relief which Anderson had been in- 
structed to look for on the eleventh or twelfth, had 
failed to appear. Several unforeseen contingencies had 
prevented the assembling of the vessels at the appointed 
rendezvous outside Charleston harbor, though some 
of them reached it in time to hear the opening guns 
of the bombardment. But as accident had deranged 
and thwarted the plan agreed upon, they could do 
nothing except impatiently await the issue of the fight. 

A little after noon of April 13, when the flagstaff of 
the fort had been shot away and its guns remained 
silent, an invitation to capitulate with the honors of 
war came from General Beauregard, which Anderson 
accepted; and on the following day, Sunday, April 14, 
he hauled down his flag with impressive ceremonies, 
and leaving the fort with his faithful garrison, pro- 
ceeded in a steamer to New York. 



XIV 

President's Proclamation Calling for Seventy -five Regi- 
ments—Responses of the Governors— Maryland and 
Virginia— The Baltimore Riot— Washington Isolated 
—Lincoln Takes the Responsibility— Robert E. Lee- 
Arrival of the New York Seventh— Suspension of Ha- 
beas Corpus— The Annapolis Route— Butler in Balti- 
more — Taney on the Merryman Case — Kentucky — 
Missouri — Lyon Captures Camp Jackson — Boonville 
Skirmish — The Missouri Convention — Gamble made 
Governor — The Border States 

THE bombardment of Fort Sumter changed the 
political situation as if by magic. There was no 
longer room for doubt, hesitation, concession, or com- 
promise. Without awaiting the arrival of the ships that 
were bringing provisions to Anderson's starving garri- 
son, the hostile Charleston batteries had opened their 
fire on the fort by the formal order of the Confederate 
government, and peaceable secession was. without 
provocation, changed to active war. The rebels gained 
possession of Charleston harbor ; but their mode of ob- 
taining it awakened the patriotism of the American 
people to a stern determination that the insult to the 
national authority and flag should be redressed, and 
the unrighteous experiment of a rival government 
founded on slavery as its corner-stone should never 
succeed. Under the conflict thus begun the long-tol- 
erated barbarous institution itself was destined ignobly 
to perish. 



192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

On his journey from Springfield to Washington 
Mr. Lincoln had said that, devoted as he was to peace, 
he might find it necessary "to put the foot down 
firmly." That time had now come. On the morning 
of April 15, 1861, the leading newspapers of the coun- 
try printed the President's proclamation reciting that, 
whereas the laws of the United States were opposed and 
the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too power- 
ful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial 
proceedings, the militia of the several States of the 
Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thou- 
sand, was called forth to suppress said combinations 
and cause the laws to be duly executed. The orders 
of the War Department specified that the period of ser- 
vice under this call should be for three months; and 
to further conform to the provisions of the Act of 
1795, under which the call was issued, the President's 
proclamation also convened the Congress in special 
session on the coming fourth of July. 

Public opinion in the free States, which had been 
sadly demoralized by the long discussions over slavery, 
and by the existence of four factions in the late presi- 
dential campaign, was instantly crystallized and con- 
solidated by the Sumter bombardment and the Presi- 
dent's proclamation into a sentiment of united support 
to the government for the suppression of the rebellion. 
The several free-State governors sent loyal and enthu- 
siastic responses to the call for militia, and tendered 
double the numbers asked for. The people of the slave 
States which had not yet joined the Montgomery 
Confederacy — namely, Virginia, North Carolina, 
Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, 
and Delaware — remained, however, more or less di- 



• BALTIMORE RIOT 193 

vided on the issue as it now presented itself. The gov- 
ernors of the first six of these were already so much en- 
gaged in the secret intrigues of the secession movement 
that they sent the Secretary of War contumacious and 
insulting replies, and distinct refusals to the President's 
call for troops. The governor of Delaware answered 
that there was no organized militia in his State which 
he had legal authority to command, but that the officers 
of organized volunteer regiments might at their own 
option offer their services to the United States ; while 
the governor of Maryland, in complying with the re- 
quisition, stipulated that the regiments from his State 
should not be required to serve outside its limits, 
except to defend the District of Columbia. 

A swift, almost bewildering rush of events, however, 
quickly compelled most of them to take sides. Seces- 
sion feeling was rampant in Baltimore; and when the 
first armed and equipped Northern regiment, the Mas- 
sachusetts Sixth, passed through that city on the 
morning of April 19, on its way to Washington, the 
last four of its companies were assailed by street mobs 
with missiles and firearms while marching from one 
depot to the other; and in the running fight which en- 
sued, four of its soldiers were killed and about thirty 
wounded, while the mob probably lost two or three 
times as many. This tragedy instantly threw the whole 
city into a wild frenzy of insurrection. That same 
afternoon an immense secession meeting in Monument 
Square listened to a torrent of treasonable protest and 
denunciation, in which Governor Hicks himself was 
made momentarily to join. The militia was called out, 
preparations were made to arm the city, and that night 
the railroad bridges were burned between Baltimore 
and the Pennsylvania line to prevent the further transit 
of Union regiments. The revolutionary furor spread 



194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN- 

to the country towns, and for a whole week the Union 
flag practically disappeared from Maryland. 

While these events were taking place to the north, 
equally threatening incidents were occurring to the 
south of Washington. The State of Virginia had been 
for many weeks balancing uneasily between loyalty 
and secession. In the new revolutionary stress her 
weak remnant of conditional Unionism gave way ; and 
on April 17, two days after the President's call, her 
State convention secretly passed a secession ordinance, 
while Governor Letcher ordered a military seizure of 
the United States navy-yard at Norfolk and the 
United States armory at Harper's Ferry. Under 
orders from Washington, both establishments were 
burned to prevent their falling into insurrectionary 
hands; but the destruction in each case was only par- 
tial, and much valuable war material thus passed to 
rebel uses. 

All these hostile occurrences put the national capital 
in the greatest danger. For three days it was entirely 
cut off from communication with the North by either 
telegraph or mail. Under the orders of General Scott, 
the city was hastily prepared for a possible siege. The 
flour at the mills, and other stores of provisions were 
taken possession of. The Capitol and other public 
buildings were barricaded, and detachments of troops 
stationed in them. Business was suspended by a com- 
mon impulse; streets were almost deserted except by 
squads of military patrol ; shutters of stores, and even 
many residences, remained unopened throughout the 
day. The signs were none too reassuring. In addition 
to the public rumors whispered about by serious faces 
on the streets, General Scott reported in writing to 
President Lincoln on the evening of April 22 : 

"Of rumors, the following are probable, viz. : First, 



WASHINGTON ISOLATED 195 

that from fifteen hundred to two thousand troops are 
at the White House (four miles below Mount Vernon, 
a narrow point in the Potomac ) , engaged in erecting a 
battery; Second, that an equal force is collected or in 
progress of assemblage on the two sides of the river 
to attack Fort Washington; and Third, that extra cars 
went up yesterday to bring down from Harper's 
Ferry about two thousand other troops to join in a 
general attack on this capital — that is, on many of its 
fronts at once. I feel confident that with our present 
forces we can defend the Capitol, the Arsenal, and all 
the executive buildings (seven) against ten thousand 
troops not better than our District volunteers." 

Throughout this crisis President Lincoln not only 
maintained his composure, but promptly assumed the 
high responsibilities the occasion demanded. On Sun- 
day, April 21, he summoned his cabinet to meet at the 
Navy Department, and with their unanimous concur- 
rence issued a number of emergency orders relating to 
the purchase of ships, the transportation of troops and 
munitions of war, the advance of $2,000,000 of money 
to a Union Safety Committee in New York, and other 
military and naval measures, which were despatched 
in duplicate by private messengers over unusual and 
circuitous routes. In a message to Congress, in which 
he afterward explained these extraordinary transac- 
tions, he said : 

"It became necessary for me to choose whether, 
using only the existing means, agencies, and processes 
which Congress had provided, I should let the govern- 
ment fall at once into ruin, or whether, availing myself 
of the broader powers conferred by the Constitution 
in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save 
it with all its blessings for the present age and for 
posterity." 



196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Unwelcome as was the thought of a possible capture 
of Washington city, President Lincoln's mind was 
much more disturbed by many suspicious indications 
of disloyalty in public officials, and especially in officers 
of the army and navy. Hundreds of clerks of South- 
ern birth employed in the various departments suddenly 
left their desks and went South. The commandant of 
the Washington navy-yard and the quartermaster- 
general of the army resigned their positions to take 
service under Jefferson Davis. One morning the cap- 
tain of a light battery on which General Scott had 
placed special reliance for the defense of Washington 
came to the President at the White House to asseverate 
and protest his loyalty and fidelity ; and that same night 
secretly left his post and went to Richmond to become 
a Confederate officer. 

The most prominent case, however, was that of 
Colonel Robert E. Lee, the officer who captured John 
Brown at Harper's Ferry, and who afterward became 
the leader of the Confederate armies. As a lieutenant 
he had served on the staff of General Scott in the war 
with Mexico. Personally knowing his ability, Scott 
recommended him to Lincoln as the most suitable officer 
to command the Union army about to be assembled 
under the President's call for seventy-five regiments; 
and this command was informally tendered him 
through a friend. Lee, however, declined the offer, 
explaining that "though opposed to secession, and 
deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion 
of the Southern States." He resigned his commission 
in a letter written on April 20, and, without waiting for 
notice of its acceptance, which alone could discharge 
him from his military obligation, proceeded to Rich- 
mond, where he was formally and publicly invested 
with the command of the Virginia military and naval 



THE ANNAPOLIS ROUTE 197 

forces on April 22; while, two days later, the rebel 
Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens, and a commit- 
tee of the Richmond convention signed a formal mili- 
tary league making Virginia an immediate member of 
the Confederate States, and placing her armies under 
the command of Jefferson Davis. 

The sudden uprising in Maryland and the insur- 
rectionary activity in Virginia had been largely stimu- 
lated by the dream of the leading conspirators that 
their new confederacy would combine all the slave 
States, and that by the adhesion of both Maryland and 
Virginia they would fall heir to a ready-made seat of 
government. While the bombardment of Sumter was 
in progress, the rebel Secretary of War, announcing 
the news in a jubilant speech at Montgomery, in the 
presence of Jefferson Davis and his colleagues, confi- 
dently predicted that the rebel flag would before the end 
of May "float over the dome of the Capitol at Wash- 
ington." The disloyal demonstrations in Maryland 
and Virginia rendered such a hope so plausible that 
Jefferson Davis telegraphed to Governor Letcher at 
Richmond that he was preparing to send him thirteen 
regiments, and added: "Sustain Baltimore if practi- 
cable. We reinforce you" ; while Senator Mason hur- 
ried to that city personally to furnish advice and mil- 
itary assistance. 

But the flattering expectation was not realized. The 
requisite preparation and concert of action were both 
wanting. The Union troops from New York and New 
England, pouring into Philadelphia, flanked the ob- 
structions of the Baltimore route by devising a new 
one by way of Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis; and 
the opportune arrival of the Seventh Regiment of New 
York in Washington, on April 25, rendered that city 
entirely safe against surprise or attack, relieved the 



1 98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

apprehension of officials and citizens, and renewed its 
business and public activity. The mob frenzy of Bal- 
timore and the Maryland towns subsided almost as 
quickly as it had risen. The Union leaders and news- 
papers asserted themselves, and soon demonstrated 
their superiority in numbers and activity. 

Serious embarrassment had been created by the ti- 
midity of Governor Hicks, who, while Baltimore re- 
mained under mob terrorism, officially protested 
against the landing of Union troops at Annapolis ; and, 
still worse, summoned the Maryland legislature to meet 
on April 26 — a step which he had theretofore stub- 
bornly refused to take. This event had become doubly 
dangerous, because a Baltimore city election held dur- 
ing the same terror week had reinforced the legislature 
with ten secession members, creating a majority eager 
to pass a secession ordinance at the first opportunity. 
The question of either arresting or dispersing the body 
by military force was one of the problems which the 
crisis forced upon President Lincoln. On full reflec- 
tion, he decided against either measure. 

"I think it would not be justifiable," he wrote to Gen- 
eral Scott, "nor efficient for the desired object. First, 
they have a clearly legal right to assemble; and we 
cannot know in advance that their action will not be 
lawful and peaceful. And if we wait until they shall 
have acted, their arrest or dispersion will not lessen 
the effect of their action. Secondly, we cannot perma- 
nently prevent their action. If we arrest them, we can- 
not long hold them as prisoners ; and, when liberated, 
they will immediately reassemble and take their action. 
And precisely the same if we simply disperse them: 
they will immediately reassemble in some other place. 
I therefore conclude that it is only left to the com- 
manding general to watch and await their action, 



THE MERRYMAN CASE 199 

which, if it shall be to arm their people against the 
United States, he is to adopt the most prompt and effi- 
cient means to counteract, even if necessary to the 
bombardment of their cities; and, in the extremest 
necessity, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus." 

Two days later the President formally authorized 
General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus 
along his military lines, or in their vicinity, if resistance 
should render it necessary. Arrivals of additional 
troops enabled the General to strengthen his military 
hold on Annapolis and the railroads; and on May 13 
General B. F. Butler, with about one thousand men, 
moved into Baltimore and established a fortified camp 
on Federal Hill, the bulk of his force being the Sixth 
Massachusetts, which had been mobbed in that city 
on April 19. Already, on the previous day, the bridges 
and railroad had been repaired, and the regular transit 
of troops through the city reestablished. 
. Under these changing conditions the secession ma- 
jority of the Maryland legislature did not venture on 
any official treason. They sent a committee to inter- 
view the President, vented their hostility in spiteful 
reports and remonstrances, and prolonged their ses- 
sion by a recess. Nevertheless, so inveterate was their 
disloyalty and plotting against the authority of the 
Union, that four months later it became necessary to 
place the leaders under arrest, finally to head off their 
darling project of a Maryland secession ordinance. 

One additional incident of this insurrectionary 
period remains to be noticed. One John Merryman, 
claiming to be a Confederate lieutenant, was arrested 
in Baltimore for enlisting men for the rebellion, and 
Chief Justice Taney of the United States Supreme 
Court, the famous author of the Dred Scott decision, 
issued a writ of habeas corpus to obtain his release from 



200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Fort McHenry. Under the President's orders, Gen- 
eral Cadwalader of course declined to obey the writ. 
Upon this, the chief justice ordered the general's ar- 
rest for contempt, but the officer sent to serve the writ 
was refused entrance to the fort. In turn, the indig- 
nant chief justice, taking counsel of his passion instead 
of his patriotism, announced dogmatically that "the 
President, under the Constitution and laws of the 
United States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ 
of habeas corpus, nor authorize any military officer to 
do so" ; and some weeks afterward filed a long written 
opinion in support of this dictum. It is unnecessary 
here to quote the opinions of several eminent jurists 
who successfully refuted his labored argument, nor to 
repeat the vigorous analysis with which, in his special 
message to Congress of July 4, President Lincoln vin- 
dicated his own authority. 

While these events were occurring in Maryland and 
Virginia, the remaining slave States were gradually 
taking sides, some for, others against rebellion. Un- 
der radical and revolutionary leadership similar to that 
of the cotton States, the governors and State officials 
of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas placed 
their States in an attitude of insurrection, and before 
the middle of May practically joined them to the Con- 
federate government by the formalities of military 
leagues and secession ordinances. 

But in the border slave States — that is, those contig- 
uous to the free States — the eventual result was differ- 
ent. In these, though secession intrigue and sympathy 
were strong, and though their governors and State 
officials favored the rebellion, the underlying loyalty 
and Unionism of the people thwarted their revolu- 
tionary schemes. This happened even in the north- 
western part of Virginia itself. The forty-eight coun- 



KENTUCKY 201 

ties of that State lying north of the Alleghanies and 
adjoining Pennsylvania and Ohio repudiated the ac- 
tion at Richmond, seceded from secession, and estab- 
lished a- loyal provisional State government. President 
Lincoln recognized them and sustained them with mil- 
itary aid ; and in due time they became organized and 
admitted to the Union as the State of West Virginia. 
In Delaware, though some degree of secession feeling 
existed, it was too insignificant to produce any note- 
worthy public demonstration. 

In Kentucky the political struggle was deep and pro- 
longed. The governor twice called the legislature to- 
gether to initiate secession proceedings; but that body 
refused compliance, and warded off his scheme by vot- 
ing to maintain the State neutrality. Next, the gov- 
ernor sought to utilize the military organization known 
as the State Guard to effect his object. The Union 
leaders offset this movement by enlisting several volun- 
teer Union regiments. At the June election nine 
Union congressmen were chosen, and only one seces- 
sionist; while in August a new legislature was elected 
with a three-fourths Union majority in each branch. 
Other secession intrigues proved equally abortive; and 
when, finally, in September, Confederate armies in- 
vaded Kentucky at three different points, the Kentucky 
legislature invited the Union armies of the West into 
the State to expel them, and voted to place forty thou- 
sand Union volunteers at the service of President 
Lincoln. 

In Missouri the struggle was more fierce, but also 
more brief. As far back as January, the conspirators 
had perfected a scheme to obtain possession, through 
the treachery of the officer in charge, of the important 
Jefferson Barracks arsenal at St. Louis, with its store 
of sixty thousand stand of arms and a million and a 



202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

half cartridges. The project, however, failed. Rumors 
of the danger came to General Scott, who ordered 
thither a company of regulars under command of Cap- 
tain Nathaniel Lyon, an officer not only loyal by nature 
and habit, but also imbued with strong antislavery 
convictions. Lyon found valuable support in the 
watchfulness of a Union Safety Committee composed 
of leading St. Louis citizens, who secretly organized 
a number of Union regiments recruited largely from 
the heavy German population ; and from these sources 
Lyon was enabled to make such a show of available 
military force as effectively to deter any mere popular 
uprising to seize the arsenal. 

A State convention, elected to pass a secession ordi- 
nance, resulted, unexpectedly to the conspirators, in the 
return of a majority of Union delegates, who voted 
down the secession program and adjourned to the fol- 
lowing December. Thereupon, the secession governor 
ordered his State militia into temporary camps of in- 
struction, with the idea of taking Missouri out of the 
Union by a concerted military movement. One of 
these encampments, established at St. Louis and named 
Camp Jackson in honor of the governor, furnished 
such unquestionable evidences of intended treason that 
Captain Lyon, whom President Lincoln had meanwhile 
authorized to enlist ten thousand Union volunteers, and, 
if necessary, to proclaim martial law, made a sudden 
march upon Camp Jackson with his regulars and six 
of his newly enlisted regiments, stationed his force in 
commanding positions around the camp, and demanded 
its surrender. The demand was complied with after 
but slight hesitation, and the captured militia regiments 
were, on the following day, disbanded under parole. 
Unfortunately, as the prisoners were being marched 
away a secession mob insulted and attacked some of 



MISSOURI 203 

Lyon's regiments and provoked a return fire, in which 
about twenty persons, mainly lookers-on, were killed 
or wounded ; and for a day or two the city was thrown 
into the panic and lawlessness of a reign of terror. 

Upon this, the legislature, in session at Jefferson 
City, the capital of the State, with a three-fourths seces- 
sion majority, rushed through the forms of legislation 
a military bill placing the military and financial re- 
sources of Missouri under the governor's control. For 
a month longer various incidents delayed the culmina- 
tion of the approaching struggle, each side continuing 
its preparations, and constantly accentuating the rising 
antagonism. The crisis came when, on June II, Gov- 
ernor Jackson and Captain Lyon, now made brigadier- 
general by the President, met in an interview at St. 
Louis. In this interview the governor demanded that 
he be permitted to exercise sole military command to 
maintain the neutrality of Missouri, while Lyon in- 
sisted that the Federal military authority must be left 
in unrestricted control. It being impossible to reach 
any agreement, Governor Jackson hurried back to his 
capital, burning railroad bridges behind him as he 
went, and on the following day, June 12, issued his 
proclamation calling out fifty thousand State militia, 
and denouncing the Lincoln administration as "an 
unconstitutional military despotism." 

Lyon was also prepared for this contingency. On 
the afternoon of June 13, he embarked with a regular 
battery and several battalions of his Union volunteers 
on steamboats, moved rapidly up the Missouri River 
to Jefferson City, drove the governor and the secession 
legislature into precipitate flight, took possession of 
the capital, and, continuing his expedition, scattered, 
after a slight skirmish, a small rebel military force 
which had hastily collected at Boonville. Rapidly fol- 



204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

lowing these events, the loyal members of the Missouri 
State convention, which had in February refused to 
pass a secession ordinance, were called together, and 
passed ordinances under which was constituted a loyal 
.State government that maintained the local civil 
authority of the United States throughout the greater 
part of Missouri during the whole of the Civil War, 
only temporarily interrupted by invasions of transient 
Confederate armies from Arkansas. 

It will be seen from the foregoing outline that the 
original hope of the Southern leaders to make the Ohio 
River the northern boundary of their slave empire was 
not realized. They indeed secured the adhesion of 
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, 
by which the territory of the Confederate States gov- 
ernment was enlarged nearly one third and its popula- 
tion and resources nearly doubled. But the northern 
tier of slave States — Maryland, West Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, and Missouri — not only decidedly refused to 
join the rebellion, but remained true to the Union; and 
this reduced the contest to a trial of military strength 
between eleven States with 5,115,790 whites, and 
3,508,131 slaves, against twenty- four States with 
21,611,422 whites and 342,212 slaves, and at least a 
proportionate difference in all other resources of war. 
At the very outset the conditions were prophetic of the 
result. 



XV 

Davis's Proclamation for Privateers — Lincoln's Procla- 
mation of Blockade — The Call for Three Years Volun- 
teers — Southern Military Preparations — Rebel Capital 
Moved to Richmond — Virginia, North Carolina, Ten- 
nessee, and Arkansas Admitted to Confederate States 
— Desertion of Army and Navy Officers — Union Troops 
Fortify Virginia Shore of the Potomac — Concentration 
at Harper's Ferry — Concentration at Fortress Monroe 
and Cairo — English Neutrality — Seward's 2ist-of-May 
Despatch — Lincoln's Corrections — Preliminary Skir- 
mishes — Forward to Richmond — Plan of McDowell's 
Campaign 

FROM the slower political developments in the bor- 
der slave States we must return and follow up the 
primary hostilities of the rebellion. The bombardment 
of Sumter, President Lincoln's call for troops, the 
Baltimore riot, the burning of Harper's Ferry armory 
and Norfolk navy-yard, and the interruption of rail- 
road communication which, for nearly a week, isolated 
the capital and threatened it with siege and possible 
capture, fully demonstrated the beginning of serious 
civil war. 

Jefferson Davis's proclamation, on April 17, of inten- 
tion to issue letters of marque, was met two days later 
by President Lincoln's counter-proclamation instituting 
a blockade of the Southern ports, and declaring that 
privateers would be held amenable to the laws against 
piracy. His first call for seventy-five thousand three 
205 



206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

months' militia was dictated as to numbers by the sud- 
den emergency, and as to form and term of service by 
the provisions of the Act of 1795. It needed only a 
few days to show that this form of enlistment was both 
cumbrous and inadequate; and the creation of a more 
powerful army was almost immediately begun. On 
May 3 a new proclamation was issued, calling into ser- 
vice 42,034 three years' volunteers, 22,714 enlisted 
men to add ten regiments to the regular army, and 
18,000 seamen for blockade service: a total immediate 
increase of 82,748, swelling the entire military estab- 
lishment to an army of 156,861 and a navy of 25,000. 

No express authority of law yet existed for these 
measures; but President Lincoln took the respon- 
sibility of ordering them, trusting that Congress 
would legalize his acts. His confidence was entirely 
justified. At the special session which met under his 
proclamation, on the fourth of July, these acts were 
declared valid, and he was authorized, moreover, to 
raise an army of a million men and $250,000,000 in 
money to carry on the war to suppress the rebellion; 
while other legislation conferred upon him supplemen- 
tary authority to meet the emergency. 

Meanwhile, the first effort of the governors of the 
loyal States was to furnish their quotas under the first 
call for militia. This was easy enough as to men. It 
required only a few days to fill the regiments and for- 
ward them to the State capitals and principal cities ; but 
to arm and equip them for the field on the spur of the 
moment was a difficult task which involved much con- 
fusion and delay, even though existing armories and 
foundries pushed their work to the utmost and new 
ones were established. Under the militia call, the gov- 
ernors appointed all the officers required by their re- 
spective quotas, from company lieutenant to major- 



REBEL WAR PREPARATIONS 207 

general of division ; while under the new call for three 
years' volunteers, their authority was limited to the 
simple organization of regiments. 

In the South, war preparation also immediately be- 
came active. All the indications are that up to their 
attack on Sumter, the Southern leaders hoped to effect 
separation through concession and compromise by the 
North. That hope, of course, disappeared with South 
Carolina's opening guns, and the Confederate gov- 
ernment made what haste it could to meet the ordeal 
it dreaded even while it had provoked it. The rebel 
Congress was hastily called together, and passed acts 
recognizing war and regulating privateering; admit- 
ting Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ar- 
kansas to the Confederate States; authorizing a 
$50,000,000 loan; practically confiscating debts due 
from Southern to Northern citizens ; and removing the 
seat of government from Montgomery, Alabama, to 
Richmond, Virginia. 

Four different calls for Southern volunteers had 
been made, aggregating 82,000 men; and Jefferson 
Davis's message now proposed to further organize and 
hold in readiness an army of 100,000. The work of 
erecting forts and batteries for defense was being rap- 
idly pushed at all points : on the Atlantic coast, on the 
Potomac, and on the Mississippi and other Western 
streams. For the present the Confederates were well 
supplied with cannon and small arms from the cap- 
tured navy-yards at Norfolk and Pensacola and the 
six or eight arsenals located in the South. The mar- 
tial spirit of their people was roused to the highest 
enthusiasm, and there was no lack of volunteers to 
fill the companies and regiments which the Confed- 
erate legislators authorized Davis to accept, either by 
regular calls on State executives in accordance with, 



208 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

or singly in defiance of, their central dogma of States 
Rights, as he might prefer. 

The secession of the Southern States not only 
strengthened the rebellion with the arms and supplies 
stored in the various military and naval depots within 
their limits, and the fortifications erected for their 
defense : what was of yet greater help to the revolt, 
a considerable portion of the officers of the army and 
navy — perhaps one third — abandoned the allegiance 
which they had sworn to the United States, and, under 
the false doctrine of State supremacy taught by South- 
ern leaders, gave their professional skill and experience 
to the destruction of the government which had edu- 
cated and honored them. The defection of Robert 
E. Lee was a conspicuous example, and his loss to the 
Union and service to the rebel army cannot easily be 
measured. So, also, were the similar cases of Ad- 
jutant-General Cooper and Quartermaster-General 
Johnston. In gratifying contrast stands the steadfast 
loyalty and devotion of Lieutenant-General Winfield 
Scott, who, though he was a Virginian and loved his 
native State, never wavered an instant in his allegiance 
to the flag he had heroically followed in the War of 
1 812, and triumphantly planted over the capital of 
Mexico in 1847. Though unable to take the field, he 
as general-in-chief directed the assembling and first 
movements of the Union troops. 

The largest part of the three months' regiments were 
ordered to Washington city as the most important 
position in a political, and most exposed in a military 
point of view. The great machine of war, once started, 
moved, as it always does, by its own inherent energy 
from arming to concentration, from concentration to 
skirmish and battle. It was not long before Wash- 
ington was a military camp. Gradually the hesita- 



HARPER'S FERRY 209 

tion to "invade" the "sacred soil" of the South faded 
out under the stern necessity to forestall an invasion 
of the equally sacred soil of the North; and on May 
24 the Union regiments in Washington crossed the 
Potomac and planted themselves in a great semicircle 
of formidable earthworks eighteen miles long on the 
Virginia shore, from Chain Bridge to Hunting Creek, 
below Alexandria. 

Meanwhile, a secondary concentration of force de- 
veloped itself at Harper's Ferry, forty-nine miles north- 
west of Washington. When, on April 20, a Union 
detachment had burned and abandoned the armory at 
that point, it was at once occupied by a handful of rebel 
militia; and immediately thereafter Jefferson Davis 
had hurried his regiments thither to "sustain" or over- 
awe Baltimore; and when that prospect failed, it be- 
came a rebel camp of instruction. Afterward, as 
Major-General Patterson collected his Pennsylvania 
quota, he turned it toward that point as a probable 
field of operations. As a mere town, Harper's Ferry 
was unimportant ; but, lying on the Potomac, and being 
at the head of the great Shenandoah valley, down 
which not only a good turnpike, but also an effective 
railroad ran southeastward to the very heart of the 
Confederacy, it was, and remained through the entire 
war, a strategical line of the first importance, protected, 
as the Shenandoah valley was, by the main chain of the 
Alleghanies on the west and the Blue Ridge on the 
east. 

A part of the eastern quotas had also been hurried 
to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, lying at the mouth of 
Chesapeake Bay, which became and continued an im- 
portant base for naval as well as military operations. 
In the West, even more important than St. Louis was 
the little town of Cairo, lying at the extreme southern 



2io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

end of the State of Illinois, at the confluence of the 
Ohio River with the Mississippi. Commanding, as it 
did, thousands of miles of river navigation in three 
different directions, and being also the southernmost 
point of the earliest military frontier, it had been the 
first care of General Scott to occupy it; and, indeed, 
it proved itself to be the military key of the whole 
Mississippi valley. 

It was not an easy thing promptly to develop a mil- 
itary policy for the suppression of the rebellion. The 
so-called Confederate States of America covered a mil- 
itary field having more than six times the area of 
Great Britain, with a coast-line of over thirty-five 
hundred miles, and an interior frontier of over seven 
thousand miles. Much less was it possible promptly to 
plan and set on foot concise military campaigns to re- 
duce the insurgent States to allegiance. Even the great 
military genius of General Scott was unable to do more 
than suggest a vague outline for the work. The prob- 
lem was not only too vast, but as yet too indefinite, 
since the political future of West Virginia, Kentucky, 
and Missouri still hung in more or less uncertainty. 

The passive and negligent attitude which the Bu- 
chanan administration had maintained toward the in- 
surrection during the whole three months between the 
presidential election and Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, 
gave the rebellion an immense advantage in the courts 
and cabinets of Europe. Until within three days of the 
end of Buchanan's term not a word of protest or even 
explanation was sent to counteract the impression that 
disunion was likely to become permanent. Indeed, the 
non-coercion doctrine of Buchanan's message was, in 
the eyes of European statesmen, equivalent to an 
acknowledgment of such a result; and the formation 
of the Confederate government, followed so quickly 



ENGLISH NEUTRALITY 211 

by the fall of Fort Sumter, seemed to them a practical 
realization of their forecast. The course of events 
appeared not merely to fulfil their expectations, but 
also, in the case of England and France, gratified their 
eager hopes. To England it promised cheap cotton 
and free trade with the South. To France it appeared 
to open the way for colonial ambitions which Napoleon 
III so soon set on foot on an imperial scale. 

Before Charles Francis Adams, whom President 
Lincoln appointed as the new minister to England, ar- 
rived in London and obtained an interview with Lord 
John Russell, Mr. Seward had already received several 
items of disagreeable news. One was that, prior to his 
arrival, the Queen's proclamation of neutrality had 
been published, practically raising the Confederate 
States to the rank of a belligerent power, and, before 
they had a single privateer afloat, giving these an 
equality in British ports with United States ships of 
war. Another was that an understanding had been 
reached between England and France which would 
lead both governments to take the same course as to 
recognition, whatever that course might be. Third, 
that three diplomatic agents of the Confederate States 
were in London, whom the British minister had not 
yet seen, but whom he had caused to be informed that 
he was not unwilling to see unofficially. 

Under the irritation produced by this hasty and 
equivocal action of the British government, Mr. Sew- 
ard wrote a despatch to Mr. Adams under date of May 
21, which, had it been sent in the form of the original 
draft, would scarcely have failed to lead to war be- 
tween the two nations. While it justly set forth with 
emphasis and courage what the government of the 
United States would endure and what it would not 
endure from foreign powers during the Southern in- 



212 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

surrection, its phraseology, written in a heat of indig- 
nation, was so blunt and exasperating as to imply 
intentional disrespect. 

When Mr. Seward read the document to President 
y^ Lincoln, the latter at once perceived its objectionable 
tone, and retained it for further reflection. A second 
reading confirmed his first impression. Thereupon, 
taking his pen, the frontier lawyer, in a careful revi- 
sion of the whole despatch, so amended and changed 
the work of the trained and experienced statesman, 
as entirely to eliminate its offensive crudeness, and 
bring it within all the dignity and reserve of the most 
studied diplomatic courtesy. If, after Mr. Seward's 
remarkable memorandum of April i, the Secretary of 
State had needed any further experience to convince 
him of the President's mastery in both administrative 
and diplomatic judgment, this second incident afforded 
him the full evidence. 

No previous President ever had such a sudden in- 
crease of official work devolve upon him as President 
Lincoln during the early months of his administration. 
The radical change of parties through which he was 
elected not only literally filled the White House with 
applicants for office, but practically compelled a whole- 
sale substitution of new appointees for the old, to rep- 
resent the new thought and will of the nation. The 
task of selecting these was greatly complicated by the 
sharp competition between the heterogeneous elements 
of which the Republican party was composed. This 
work was not half completed when the Sumter bom- 
bardment initiated active rebellion, and precipitated 
the new difficulty of sifting the loyal from the disloyal, 
and the yet more pressing labor of scrutinizing the or- 
ganization of the immense new volunteer army called 
into service by the proclamation of May 3. Mr. Lin- 



THE PRESIDENT'S LABORS 213 

coin used often to say at this period, when besieged by- 
claims to appointment, that he felt like a man letting 
rooms at one end of his house, while the other end was 
on fire. In addition to this merely routine work was 
the much more delicate and serious duty of deciding 
the hundreds of novel questions affecting the consti- 
tutional principles and theories of administration. 

The great departments of government, especially 
those of war and navy, could not immediately expedite 
either the supervision or clerical details of this sudden 
expansion, and almost every case of resulting confusion 
and delay was brought by impatient governors and 
State officials to the President for complaint and cor- 
rection. Volunteers were coming rapidly enough to 
the various rendezvous in the different States, but 
where were the rations to feed them, money to pay 
them, tents to shelter them, uniforms to clothe them, 
rifles to arm them, officers to drill and instruct them, 
or transportation to carry them? In this carnival of 
patriotism, this hurly-burly of organization, the weak- 
nesses as well as the virtues of human nature quickly 
developed themselves, and there was manifest not only 
the inevitable friction of personal rivalry, but also the 
disturbing and baneful effects of occasional falsehood 
and dishonesty, which could not always be immedi- 
ately traced to the responsible culprit. It happened 
in many instances that there were alarming discrepan- 
cies between the full paper regiments and brigades re- 
ported as ready to start from State capitals, and the 
actual number of recruits that railroad trains brought 
to the Washington camps; and Mr. Lincoln several 
times ironically compared the process to that of a man 
trying to shovel a bushel of fleas across a barn floor. 

While the month of May insensibly slipped away 
amid these preparatory vexations, camps of instruction 



214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rapidly grew to small armies at a few principal points, 
even under such incidental delay and loss ; and during 
June the confronting Union and Confederate forces be- 
gan to produce the conflicts and casualties of earnest 
war. As yet they were both few and unimportant: 
the assassination of Ellsworth when Alexandria was 
occupied; a slight cavalry skirmish at Fairfax Court 
House; the rout of a Confederate regiment at Phi- 
lippi, West Virginia ; the blundering leadership through 
which two Union detachments fired upon each other 
in the dark at Big Bethel, Virginia; the ambush 
of a Union railroad train at Vienna Station; and 
Lyon's skirmish, which scattered the first collection 
of rebels at Boonville, Missouri. Comparatively speak- 
ing, all these were trivial in numbers of dead and 
wounded — the first few drops of blood before the 
heavy sanguinary showers the future was destined to 
bring. But the effect upon the public was irritating 
and painful to a degree entirely out of proportion to 
their real extent and gravity. 

The relative loss and gain in these affairs was not 
greatly unequal. The victories of Philippi and Boon- 
ville easily offset the disasters of Big Bethel and 
Vienna. But the public mind was not yet schooled to 
patience and to the fluctuating chances of war. The 
newspapers demanded prompt progress and ample vic- 
tory, as imperatively as they were wont to demand 
party triumph in politics or achievement in commer- 
cial enterprise. "Forward to Richmond," repeated the 
"New York Tribune," day after day, and many sheets 
of lesser note and influence echoed the cry. There 
seemed, indeed, a certain reason for this clamor, be- 
cause the period of enlistment of the three months' 
regiments was already two thirds gone, and they were 
not yet all armed and equipped for field service. 



THE REBEL POSITION 215 

President Lincoln was fully alive to the need of 
meeting this popular demand. The special session of 
Congress was soon to begin, and to it the new adminis- 
tration must look, not only to ratify what had been done, 
but to authorize a large increase of the military force, 
and heavy loans for coming expenses of the war. On 
June 29, therefore, he called his cabinet and principal 
military officers to a council of war at the Executive 
Mansion, to discuss a more formidable campaign than 
had yet been planned. General Scott was opposed to 
such an undertaking at that time. He preferred wait- 
ing until autumn, meanwhile organizing and drilling 
a large army, with which to move down the Missis- 
sippi and end the war with a final battle at New 
Orleans. Aside from the obvious military objections 
to this course, such a procrastination, in the present 
irritation of the public temper, was not to be thought 
of; and the old general gracefully waived his pref- 
erence and contributed his best judgment to the 
perfecting of an immediate campaign into Virginia. 

The Confederate forces in Virginia had been gath- 
ered by the orders of General Lee into a defensive posi- 
tion at Manassas Junction, where a railroad from Rich- 
mond and another from Harper's Ferry come together. 
Here General Beauregard, who had organized and con- 
ducted the Sumter bombardment, had command of a 
total of about twenty-five thousand men which he was 
drilling. The Junction was fortified with some slight 
field-works and fifteen heavy guns, supported by a gar- 
rison of two thousand; while the main body was 
camped in a line of seven miles' length behind Bull Run, 
a winding, sluggish stream flowing southeasterly tow- 
ard the Potomac. The distance was about thirty-two 
miles southwest of Washington. Another Confeder- 
ate force of about ten thousand, under General J. E. 



216 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Johnston, was collected at Winchester and Harper's 
Ferry on the Potomac, to guard the entrance to the 
Shenandoah valley; and an understanding existed be- 
tween Johnston and Beauregard, that in case either 
were attacked, the other would come to his aid by the 
quick railroad transportation between the two places. 

The new Union plan contemplated that Brigadier- 
General McDowell should march from Washington 
against Manassas and Bull Run, with a force sufficient 
to beat Beauregard, while General Patterson, who had 
concentrated the bulk of the Pennsylvania regiments 
in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, in numbers 
nearly or quite double that of his antagonist, should 
move against Johnston, and either fight or hold him 
so that he could not come to the aid of Beauregard. 
At the council McDowell emphasized the danger of 
such a junction ; but General Scott assured him : "If 
Johnston joins Beauregard, he shall have Patterson 
on his heels." With this understanding, McDowell's 
movement was ordered to begin on July 9. 



XVI 

Congress — The President's Message — Men and Money 
y ted — The Contraband — Dennison Appoints McClel- 
\ an — Rich Mountain — McDowell — B nil Run — Patter- 
son's Failure — McClellan at Washington 

TyTHILE these preparations for a Virginia cam- 
Vr paign were going on, another campaign was 
also slowly shaping itself in Western Virginia; but be- 
fore either of them reached any decisive results the 
Thirty-seventh Congress, chosen at the presidential 
election of i860, met in special session on the fourth of 
July, 1 86 1, in pursuance of the President's proclama- 
tion of April 15. There being no members present in 
either branch from the seceded States, the number in 
each house was reduced nearly one third. A great 
change in party feeling was also manifest. No more 
rampant secession speeches were to be heard. Of the 
rare instances of men who were yet to join the rebel- 
lion, ex-Vice-President Breckinridge was the most con- 
spicuous example; and their presence was offset by 
prominent Southern Unionists like Andrew Johnson 
of Tennessee, and John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. 
The heated antagonisms which had divided the pre- 
vious Congress into four clearly defined factions were 
so far restrained or obliterated by the events of the 
past four months, as to leave but a feeble opposition 
to the Republican majority now dominant in both 
branches, which was itself rendered moderate and pru- 
dent by the new conditions. 
217 



218 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The message of President Lincoln was temperate 
in spirit, but positive and strong in argument. Recit- 
ing the secession and rebellion of the Confederate 
States, and their unprovoked assault on Fort Sumter, 
he continued : 

"Having said to them in the inaugural address, 'You 
can have no conflict without being yourselves the ag- 
gressors,' he took pains not only to keep this declaration 
good, but also to keep the case so free from the power 
of ingenious sophistry that the world should not be able 
to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, 
with its surrounding circumstances, that point . was 
reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the gov- 
ernment began the conflict of arms, without a gun in 
sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only 
the few in the fort sent to that harbor years before for 
their own protection, and still ready to give that pro- 
tection in whatever was lawful. . . . This issue 
embraces more than the fate of these United States. 
It presents to the whole family of man the question 
whether a constitutional republic or democracy — a gov- 
ernment of the people by the same people — can or can- 
not maintain its territorial integrity against its own 
domestic foes." 

With his singular felicity of statement, he analyzed 
and refuted the sophism that secession was lawful and 
constitutional. 

"This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of 
its currency from the assumption that there is some 
omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State 
— to each State of our Federal Union. Our States 
have neither more nor less power than that reserved 
to them in the Union by the Constitution — no one of 
them ever having been a State out of the Union. . . . 
The States have their status in the Union, and they have 



THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE 219 

no other legal status. If they break from this, they can 
only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, 
and not themselves separately, procured their inde- 
pendence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase 
the Union gave each of them whatever of independence 
or liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the 
States, and, in fact, it created them as States. Origi- 
nally some dependent colonies made the Union, and, in 
turn, the Union threw off their old dependence for 
them, and made them States, such as they are. Not one 
of them ever had a State constitution independent of 
the Union." 

A noteworthy point in the message is President 
Lincoln's expression of his abiding confidence in the in- 
telligence and virtue of the people of the United States. 

"It may be affirmed," said he, "without extrava- 
gance, that the free institutions we enjoy have devel- 
oped the powers and improved the condition of our 
whole people beyond any example in the world. Of 
this we now have a striking and an impressive illus- 
tration. So large an army as the government has now 
on foot was never before known, without a soldier in it 
but who has taken his place there of his own free 
choice. But more than this, there are many single regi- 
ments whose members, one and another, possess full 
practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, profes- 
sions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, 
is known in the world ; and there is scarcely one from 
which there could not be selected a President, a cab- 
inet, a congress, and, perhaps, a court, abundantly com- 
petent to administer the government itself. . . . 
This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of 
the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world 
that form and substance of government whose leading 
object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift arti- 



220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ficial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of 
laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered 
start, and a fair chance in the race of life. ... I 
am most happy to believe that the plain people under- 
stand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that 
while in this, the government's hour of trial, large 
numbers of those in the army and navy who have been 
favored with the offices have resigned and proved false 
to the hand which had pampered them, not one common 
soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his 
flag." 

Hearty applause greeted that portion of the message 
which asked for means to make the contest short and 
decisive; and Congress acted promptly by authorizing 
a loan of $250,000,000 and an army not to exceed 
one million men. All of President Lincoln's war mea- 
sures for which no previous sanction of law existed 
were duly legalized ; additional direct income and tariff 
taxes were laid; and the Force Bill of 1795, and 
various other laws relating to conspiracy, piracy, un- 
lawful recruiting, and kindred topics, were amended 
or passed. 

Throughout the whole history of the South, by no 
means the least of the evils entailed by the institution 
of slavery was the dread of slave insurrections which 
haunted every master's household; and this vague ter- 
ror was at once intensified by the outbreak of civil war. 
It stands to the lasting credit of the negro race in the 
United States that the wrongs of their long bondage 
provoked them to no such crime, and that the Civil 
War appears not to have even suggested, much less 
started, any such organization or attempt. But the 
John Brown raid had indicated some possibility of the 
kind, and when the Union troops began their move- 
ments, Generals Butler in Maryland and Patterson in 



THE CONTRABAND 221 

Pennsylvania, moving toward Harper's Ferry, and 
McClellan in West Virginia, in order to reassure non- 
combatants, severally issued orders that all attempts 
at slave insurrection should be suppressed. It was a 
most pointed and significant warning to the leaders of 
the rebellion how much more vulnerable the peculiar 
institution was in war than in peace, and that their 
ill-considered scheme to protect and perpetuate slavery 
would prove the most potent engine for its destruction. 

The first effect of opening hostilities was to give ad- 
venturous or discontented slaves the chance to escape 
into Union camps, where, even against orders to the 
contrary, they found practical means of protection or 
concealment for the sake of the help they could render 
as cooks, servants, or teamsters, or for the information 
they could give or obtain, or the invaluable service they 
could render as guides. Practically, therefore, at the 
very beginning, the war created a bond of mutual sym- 
pathy, based on mutual helpfulness, between the South- 
ern negro and the Union volunteer; and as fast as the 
Union troops advanced, and secession masters fled, 
more or less slaves found liberation and refuge in the 
Union camps. 

At some points, indeed, this tendency created an em- 
barrassment to Union commanders. A few days after 
General Butler assumed command of the Union troops 
at Fortress Monroe, the agent of a rebel master who 
had fled from the neighborhood came to demand, under 
the provisions of the fugitive-slave law, three field 
hands alleged to be in Butler's camp. Butler re- 
sponded that as Virginia claimed to be a foreign coun- 
try, the fugitive-slave law was clearly inoperative, 
unless the owner would come and take an oath of alle- 
giance to the United States. In connection with this 
incident, the newspaper report stated that as the breast- 



222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

works and batteries which had been so rapidly erected 
for Confederate defense in every direction on the Vir- 
ginia peninsula were built by enforced negro labor un- 
der rigorous military impressment, negroes were mani- 
festly contraband of war under international law. 
The dictum was so pertinent, and the equity so plain, 
that, though it was not officially formulated by the gen- 
eral until two months later, it sprang at once into pop- 
ular acceptance and application; and from that time 
forward the words "slave" and "negro" were every- 
where within the Union lines replaced by the familiar, 
significant term "contraband." 

While Butler's happy designation had a more con- 
vincing influence on public thought than a volume of 
discussion, it did not immediately solve the whole 
question. Within a few days he reported that he had 
slave property to the value of $60,000 in his hands, 
and by the end of July nine hundred "contrabands," 
men, women, and children, of all ages. What was 
their legal status, and how should they be disposed of? 
It was a knotty problem, for upon its solution might 
depend the sensitive public opinion and balancing, un- 
decided loyalty and political action of the border slave 
States of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and 
Missouri. In solving the problem, President Lincoln 
kept in mind the philosophic maxim of one of his 
favorite stories, that when the Western Methodist pre- 
siding elder, riding about the circuit during the spring 
freshets, was importuned by his young companion how 
they should ever be able to get across the swollen 
waters of Fox River, which they were approaching, 
the elder quieted him by saying he had made it the rule 
of his life never to cross Fox River till he came to it. 

The President did not immediately decide, but left 
it to be treated as a question of camp and local police, 



THE CONTRABAND 223 

in the discretion of each commander. Under this 
theory, later in the war, some commanders excluded, 
others admitted such fugitives to their camps ; and the 
curt formula of General Orders, "We have nothing 
to do with slaves. We are neither negro stealers nor 
negro catchers," was easily construed by subordinate 
officers to justify the practice of either course. Inter 
arma silent leges. For the present, Butler was in- 
structed not to surrender such fugitives, but to employ 
them in suitable labor, and leave the question of their 
final disposition for future determination. Congress 
greatly advanced the problem, soon after the battle of 
Bull Run, by adopting an amendment which confis- 
cated a rebel master's right to his slave when, by his 
consent, such slave was employed in service or labor 
hostile to the United States. The debates exhibited 
but little spirit of partizanship, even on this feature of 
the slavery question. The border State members did 
not attack the justice of such a penalty. They could 
only urge that it was unconstitutional and inexpedient. 
On the general policy of the war, both houses, with 
but few dissenting votes, passed the resolution, offered 
by Mr. Crittenden, which declared that the war was not 
waged for oppression or subjugation, or to interfere 
with the rights or institutions of States, "but to defend 
and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to 
preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and 
rights of the several States unimpaired." The special 
session adjourned on August 6, having in a single 
month completed and enacted a thorough and compre- 
hensive system of war legislation. 

The military events that were transpiring in the 
meanwhile doubtless had their effect in hastening the 
decision and shortening the labors of Congress. To 
command the thirteen regiments of militia furnished 



224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

by the State of Ohio, Governor Dennison had given a 
commission of major-general to George B. McClellan, 
who had been educated at West Point and served with 
distinction in the Mexican War, and who, through 
unusual opportunities in travel and special duties in 
surveys and exploration, had gained acquirements and 
qualifications that appeared to fit him for a brilliant 
career. Being but thirty-five years old, and having 
reached only the grade of captain, he had resigned 
from the army, and was at the moment serving as 
president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad. Gen- 
eral Scott warmly welcomed his appointment to lead 
the Ohio contingent, and so industriously facilitated 
his promotion that by the beginning of June Mc- 
Clellan's militia commission as major-general had been 
changed to a commission for the same grade in the 
regular army, and he found himself assigned to the 
command of a military department extending from 
Western Virginia to Missouri. Though this was a 
leap in military title, rank, and power which excels the 
inventions of romance, it was necessitated by the sud- 
den exigencies of army expansion over the vast ter- 
ritory bordering the insurrection, and for a while 
seemed justified by the hopeful promise indicated in the 
young officer's zeal and activity. 

His instructions made it a part of his duty to en- 
courage and support the Unionists of Western Virginia 
in their political movement to divide the State and 
erect a Union commonwealth out of that portion of it 
lying northwest of the Alleghanies. General Lee, not 
fully informed of the adverse popular sentiment, sent 
a few Confederate regiments into that region to gather 
recruits and hold the important mountain passes. 
McClellan, in turn, advanced a detachment eastward 
from Wheeling, to protect the Baltimore and Ohio 



RICH MOUNTAIN 225 

railroad ; and at the beginning of June, an expedition 
of two regiments, led by Colonel Kelly, made a spirited 
dash upon Philippi, where, by a complete surprise, he 
routed and scattered Porterfield's recruiting detach- 
ment of one thousand Confederates. Following up 
this initial success, McClellan threw additional forces 
across the Ohio, and about a month later had the good 
fortune, on July 1 1 , by a flank movement under Rose- 
crans, to drive a regiment of the enemy out of strong 
intrenchments on Rich Mountain, force the surrender 
of the retreating garrison on the following day, July 
12, and to win a third success on the thirteenth over 
another flying detachment at Carrick's Ford, one of the 
crossings of the Cheat River, where the Confederate 
General Garnett was killed in a skirmish-fire between 
sharp-shooters. 

These incidents, happening on three successive days, 
and in distance forty miles apart, made a handsome 
showing for the young department commander when 
gathered into the single, short telegram in which he 
reported to Washington that Garnett was killed, his 
force routed, at least two hundred of the enemy killed, 
and seven guns and one thousand prisoners taken. 
"Our success is complete, and secession is killed in this 
country," concluded the despatch. The result, indeed, 
largely overshadowed in importance the means which 
accomplished it. The Union loss was only thirteen 
killed and forty wounded. In subsequent effect, these 
two comparatively insignificant skirmishes permanently 
recovered the State of West Virginia to the Union. 
The main credit was, of course, due to the steadfast 
loyalty of the people of that region. 

This victory afforded welcome relief to the strained 
and impatient public opinion of the Northern States, 
and sharpened the eager expectation of the authorities 



226 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

at Washington of similar results from the projected 
Virginia campaign. The organization and command 
of that column were intrusted to Brigadier-General 
McDowell, advanced to this grade from his previous 
rank of major. He was forty-two years old, an ac- 
complished West Point graduate, and had won distinc- 
tion in the Mexican War, though since that time he 
had been mainly engaged in staff duty. On the morn- 
ing of July 1 6, he began his advance from the fortifica- 
tions of Washington, with a marching column of about 
twenty-eight thousand men and a total of forty-nine 
guns, an additional division of about six thousand be- 
ing left behind to guard his commuications. Owing to 
the rawness of his troops, the first few days' march was 
necessarily cautious and cumbersome. 

The enemy, under Beauregard, had collected about 
twenty-three thousand men and thirty-five guns, and 
was posted behind Bull Run. A preliminary engage- 
ment occurred on Thursday, July 18, at Blackburn's 
Ford on that stream, which served to develop the 
enemy's strong position, but only delayed the advance 
until the whole of McDowell's force reached Centre- 
ville. Here McDowell halted, spent Friday and Satur- 
day in reconnoitering, and on Sunday, July 21, began 
the battle by a circuitous march across Bull Run and 
attacking the enemy's left flank. 

It proved that the plan was correctly chosen, but, by 
a confusion in the march, the attack, intended for day- 
break, was delayed until nine o'clock. Nevertheless, 
the first half of the battle, during the forenoon, was 
entirely successful, the Union lines steadily driving the 
enemy southward, and enabling additional Union bri- 
gades to join the attacking column by a direct march 
from Centreville. 

At noon, however, the attack came to a halt, partly 



BULL RUN 227 

through the fatigue of the troops, partly because the 
advancing line, having swept the field for nearly a mile, 
found itself in a valley, from which further progress 
had to be made with all the advantage of the ground in 
favor of the enemy. In the lull of the conflict which 
for a while ensued, the Confederate commander, with 
little hope except to mitigate a defeat, hurriedly con- 
centrated his remaining artillery and supporting regi- 
ments into a semicircular line of defense at the top of 
the hill that the Federals would be obliged to mount, 
and kept them well concealed among the young pines 
at the edge of the timber, with an open field in their 
front. 

Against this second position of the enemy, compris- 
ing twelve regiments, twenty-two guns, and two com- 
panies of cavalry, McDowell advanced in the afternoon 
with an attacking force of fourteen regiments, twenty- 
four guns, and a single battalion of cavalry, but with 
all the advantages of position against him. A fluc- 
tuating and intermitting attack resulted. The nature 
of the ground rendered a combined advance impossible. 
The Union brigades were sent forward and repulsed 
by piecemeal. A battery was lost by mistaking a Con- 
federate for a Union regiment. Even now the victory 
seemed to vibrate, when a new flank attack by seven 
rebel regiments, from an entirely unexpected direction, 
suddenly impressed the Union troops with the belief 
that Johnston's army from Harper's Ferry had reached 
the battle-field; and, demoralized by this belief, the 
Union commands, by a common impulse, gave up the 
fight as lost, and half marched, half ran from the field. 
Before reaching Centreville, the retreat at one point 
degenerated into a downright panic among army team- 
sters and a considerable crowd of miscellaneous camp- 
followers ; and here a charge or two by the Confederate 



228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cavalry companies captured thirteen Union guns and 
quite a harvest of army wagons. 

When the truth came to be known, it was found that 
through the want of skill and courage on the part of 
General Patterson in his operations at Harper's Ferry, 
General Johnston, with his whole Confederate army, 
had been allowed to slip away ; and so far from coining 
suddenly into the battle of Bull Run, the bulk of them 
were already in Beauregard's camps on Saturday, and 
performed the heaviest part of the fighting in Sunday's 
conflict. 

The sudden cessation of the battle left the Confed- 
erates in doubt whether their victory was final, or only 
a prelude to a fresh Union attack. But as the Union 
forces not only retreated from the field, but also from 
Centreville, it took on, in their eyes, the proportions 
of a great triumph ; confirming their expectation of 
achieving ultimate independence, and, in fact, giving 
them a standing in the eyes of foreign nations which 
they had hardly dared hope for so soon. In numbers 
of killed and wounded, the two armies suffered about 
equally; and General Johnston writes: "The Confed- 
erate army was more disorganized by victory than that 
of the United States by defeat." Manassas was turned 
into a fortified camp, but the rebel leaders felt them- 
selves unable to make an aggressive movement during 
the whole of the following autumn and winter. 

The shock of the defeat was deep and painful to the 
administration and the people of the North. Up to late 
Sunday afternoon favorable reports had come to 
Washington from the battle-field, and every one be- 
lieved in an assured victory. When a telegram came 
about five o'clock in the afternoon, that the day was 
lost, and McDowell's army in full retreat through 
Centreville, General Scott refused to credit the news, 



BULL RUN 229 

so contradictory of everything which had been heard 
up to that hour. But the intelligence was quickly con- 
firmed. The impulse of retreat once started, Mc- 
Dowell's effort to arrest it at Centreville proved useless. 
The regiments and brigades not completely disorgan- 
ized made an unmolested and comparatively orderly 
march back to the fortifications of Washington, while 
on the following day a horde of stragglers found 
their way across the bridges of the Potomac into the 
city. 

President Lincoln received the news quietly and 
without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement ; 
but he remained awake and in the executive office all 
of Sunday night, listening to the personal narratives 
of a number of congressmen and senators who had, 
with undue curiosity, followed the army and witnessed 
some of the sounds and sights of the battle. By the 
dawn of Monday morning the President had substan- 
tially made up his judgment of the battle and its 
probable results, and the action dictated by the un- 
toward event. This was, in brief, that the militia regi- 
ments enlisted under the three months' call should be 
mustered out as soon as practicable; the organization 
of the new three years' forces be pushed forward both 
east and west; Manassas and Harper's Ferry and the 
intermediate lines of communication be seized and 
held ; and a joint movement organized from Cincinnati 
on East Tennessee, and from Cairo on Memphis. 

Meanwhile, General McClellan was ordered from 
West Virginia to Washington, where he arrived on 
July 26, and assumed command of the Division of the 
Potomac, comprising the troops in and around Wash- 
ington, on both sides of the river. He quickly cleared 
the city of stragglers, and displayed a gratifying ac- 
tivity in beginning the organization of the Army of the 



230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Potomac from the new three years' volunteers that 
were pouring into Washington by every train. He was 
received by the administration and the army with the 
warmest friendliness and confidence, and for awhile 
seemed to reciprocate these feelings with zeal and 
gratitude. 



XVII 

General Scott's Plans— Criticised as the "Anaconda" — 
The Three Fields of Conflict— Fremont Appointed 
Major-General— His Military Failures— Battle of Wil- 
son's Creek — Hunter Ordered to Fremont — Fremont's 
Proclamation— President Revokes Fremont's Procla- 
mation — Lincoln's Letter to Browning — Surrender of 
Lexington — Fremont Takes the Field — Cameron's 
Visit to Fremont — Fremont's Removal 

THE military genius and experience of General 
Scott, from the first, pretty correctly divined the 
grand outline of military operations which would be- 
come necessary in reducing the revolted Southern 
States to renewed allegiance. Long before the battle 
of Bull Run was planned, he urged that the first sev- 
enty-five regiments of three months' militia could not 
be relied on for extensive campaigns, because their 
term of service would expire before they could be well 
organized. His outline suggestion, therefore, was that 
the new three years' volunteer army be placed in ten 
or fifteen healthy camps and given at least four months 
of drill and tactical instruction ; and when the navy had, 
by a rigid blockade, closed all the harbors along the sea- 
board of the Southern States, the fully prepared army 
should, by invincible columns, move down the Missis- 
sippi River to New Orleans, leaving a strong cordon 
of military posts behind it to keep open the stream, join 
hands with the blockade, and thus envelop the princi- 
231 



232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pal area of rebellion in a powerful military grasp which 
would paralyze and effectually kill the insurrection. 
Even while suggesting this plan, however, the general 
admitted that the great obstacle to its adoption would 
be the impatience of the patriotic and loyal Union peo- 
ple and leaders, who would refuse to wait the neces- 
sary length of time. 

The general was correct in his apprehension. The 
newspapers criticized his plan in caustic editorials and 
ridiculous cartoons as "Scott's Anaconda," and pub- 
lic opinion rejected it in an overwhelming demand for 
a prompt and energetic advance. Scott was correct 
in military theory, while the people and the administra- 
tion were right in practice, under existing political con- 
ditions. Although Bull Run seemed to justify the 
general. West Virginia and Missouri vindicated the 
President and the people. 

It can now be seen that still a third element — geog- 
raphy — intervened to give shape and sequence to the 
main outlines of the Civil War. When, at the begin- 
ning of May, General Scott gave his advice, the seat of 
government of the first seven Confederate States was 
still at Montgomery, Alabama. By the adhesion of 
the four interior border States to the insurrection, and 
the removal of the archives and administration of 
Jefferson Davis to Richmond, Virginia, toward the end 
of June, as the capital of the now eleven Confederate 
States, Washington necessarily became the center of 
Union attack, and Richmond the center of Confederate 
defense. From the day when McDowell began his 
march to Bull Run, to that when Lee evacuated Rich- 
mond in his final hopeless flight, the route between 
these two opposing capitals remained the principal and 
dominating line of military operations, and the region 
between Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River on the 



FREMONT, MAJOR-GENERAL 233 

east, and the chain of the Alleghanies on the west, the 
primary field of strategy. 

According to geographical features, the second great 
field of strategy lay between the Alleghany Mountains 
and the Mississippi River, and the third between the 
Mississippi River, the Rocky Mountains, and the Rio 
Grande. Except in Western Virginia, the attitude of 
neutrality assumed by Kentucky for a considerable 
time delayed the definition of the military frontier and 
the beginning of active hostilities in the second field, 
thus giving greater momentary importance to condi- 
tions existing and events transpiring in Missouri, with 
the city of St. Louis as the principal center of the third 
great military field. 

The same necessity which dictated the promotion of 
General McClellan at one bound from captain to major- 
general compelled a similar phenomenal promotion, 
not alone of officers of the regular army, but also of 
eminent civilians to high command and military re- 
sponsibility in the immense volunteer force authorized 
by Congress. Events, rather than original purpose, 
had brought McClellan into prominence and ranking 
duty; but now, by design, the President gave John C. 
Fremont a commission of major-general, and placed 
him in command of the third great military field, with 
headquarters at St. Louis, with the leading idea that he 
should organize the military strength of the Northwest, 
first, to hold Missouri to the Union, and, second, by a 
carefully prepared military expedition open the Mis- 
sissippi River. By so doing, he would sever the Con- 
federate States, reclaim or conquer the region lying 
west of the great stream, and thus reduce by more than 
one half the territorial area of the insurrection. 
Though he had been an army lieutenant, he had no 
experience in active war; yet the talent and energy 



234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he had displayed in Western military exploration, and 
the political prominence he had reached as candidate 
of the Republican party for President in 1856, seemed 
to fit him preeminently for such a duty. 

While most of the volunteers from New England 
and the Middle States were concentrated at Wash- 
ington and dependent points, the bulk of the Western 
regiments was, for the time being, put under the com- 
mand of Fremont for present and prospective duty. 
But the high hopes which the administration placed in 
the general were not realized. The genius which could 
lead a few dozen or a few hundred Indian scouts and 
mountain trappers over desert plains and through the 
fastnesses of the Sierra Nevada, that could defy savage 
hostilities and outlive starvation amid imprisoning 
snows, failed signally before the task of animating and 
combining the patriotic enthusiasm of eight or ten 
great northwestern States, and organizing and leading 
an army of one hundred thousand eager volunteers 
in a comprehensive and decisive campaign to recover 
a great national highway. From the first, Fremont 
failed in promptness, in foresight, in intelligent super- 
vision; and, above all, in inspiring confidence and at- 
tracting assistance and devotion. His military admin- 
istration created serious extravagance and confusion, 
and his personal intercourse excited the distrust and re- 
sentment of the governors and civilian officials, whose 
counsel and cooperation were essential to his usefulness 
and success. 

While his resources were limited, and while he for- 
tified St. Louis and reinforced Cairo, a yet more impor- 
tant point needed his attention and help. Lyon, who 
had followed Governor Jackson and General Price in 
their flight from Boonville to Springfield in southern 
Missouri, found his forces diminished beyond his ex- 



BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK 235 

pectation by the expiration of the term of service of his 
three months' regiments, and began to be threatened 
by a northward concentration of Confederate detach- 
ments from the Arkansas line and the Indian Territory. 
The neglect of his appeals for help placed him in the 
situation where he could neither safely remain inactive, 
nor safely retreat. He therefore took the chances of 
scattering the enemy before him by a sudden, daring 
attack with his five thousand effectives, against nearly 
treble numbers, in the battle of Wilson's Creek, at day- 
light on August 10. The casualties on the two sides 
were nearly equal, and the enemy was checked and 
crippled ; but the Union army sustained a fatal loss in 
the death of General Lyon, who was instantly killed 
while leading a desperate bayonet charge. His skill 
and activity had, so far, been the strength of the Union 
cause in Missouri. The absence of his counsel and per- 
sonal example rendered a retreat to the railroad ter- 
minus at Rolla necessary. This discouraging event 
turned public criticism sharply upon Fremont. Loath 
to yield to mere public clamor, and averse to hasty 
changes in military command, Mr. Lincoln sought to 
improve the situation by sending General David Hun- 
ter to take a place on Fremont's staff. 

''General Fremont needs assistance," said his note 
to Hunter, "which it is difficult to give him. He is los- 
ing the confidence of men near him, whose support any 
man in his position must have to be successful. His 
cardinal mistake is that he isolates himself, and allows 
nobody to see him; and by which he does not know 
what is going on in the very matter he is dealing with. 
He needs to have by his side a man of large experience. 
Will you not, for me, take that place ? Your rank is one 
grade too high to be ordered to it ; but will you not serve 
the country and oblige me by taking it voluntarily?" 



236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

This note indicates, better than pages of description, 
the kind, helpful, and forbearing spirit with which the 
President, through the long four years' war, treated 
his military commanders and subordinates ; and which, 
in several instances, met such ungenerous return. But 
even while Mr. Lincoln was attempting to smooth this 
difficulty, Fremont had already burdened him with two 
additional embarrassments. One was a perplexing per- 
sonal quarrel the general had begun with the influential 
Blair family, represented by Colonel Frank Blair, the 
indefatigable Unionist leader in Missouri, and Mont- 
gomery Blair, the postmaster-general in Lincoln's cab- 
inet, who had hitherto been Fremont's most influential 
friends and supporters ; and, in addition, the father of 
these, Francis P. Blair, Sr., a veteran politician whose 
influence dated from Jackson's administration, and 
through whose assistance Fremont had been nominated 
as presidential candidate in 1856. 

The other embarrassment was of a more serious and 
far-reaching nature. Conscious that he was losing the 
esteem and confidence of both civil and military leaders 
in the West, Fremont's adventurous fancy caught at 
the idea of rehabilitating himself before the public by 
a bold political manceuver. Day by day the relation of 
slavery to the Civil War was becoming a more trouble- 
some question, and exciting impatient and angry dis- 
cussion. Without previous consultation with the Presi- 
dent or any of his advisers or friends, Fremont, on 
August 30, wrote and printed, as commander of the 
Department of the West, a proclamation establishing 
martial law throughout the State of Missouri, and an- 
nouncing that: 

"All persons who shall be taken with arms in their 
hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, 
and if found guilty will be shot. The property, real 



FREMONT'S PROCLAMATION 237 

and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri 
who shall take up arms against the United States, or 
who shall be directly proven to have taken an active 
part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be 
confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any 
they have, are hereby declared freemen." 

The reason given in the proclamation for this drastic 
and dictatorial measure was to suppress disorder, 
maintain the public peace, and protect persons and 
property of loyal citizens — all simple police duties. 
For issuing his proclamation without consultation with 
the President, he could offer only the flimsy excuse 
that it involved two days of time to communicate with 
Washington, while he well knew that no battle was 
pending and no invasion in progress. This reckless 
misuse of power President Lincoln also corrected with 
his dispassionate prudence and habitual courtesy. He 
immediately wrote to the general : 

"My Dear Sir: Two points in your proclamation 
of August 30 give me some anxiety : 

"First. Should you shoot a man, according to the 
proclamation, the Confederates would very certainly 
shoot our best men in their hands, in retaliation; and 
so, man for man, indefinitely. It is, therefore, my 
order that you allow no man to be shot under the 
proclamation, without first having my approbation or 
consent. 

"Second. I think there is great danger that the 
closing paragraph, in relation to the confiscation of 
property and the liberating slaves of traitorous own- 
ers, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn 
them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect 
for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you 
will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so 
as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act 



238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Congress entitled, 'An act to confiscate property 
used for insurrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 
1861, and a copy of which act I herewith send you. 

"This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not 
of censure. I send it by a special messenger, in order 
that it may certainly and speedily reach you." 

But the headstrong general was too blind and self- 
ish to accept this mild redress of a fault that would 
have justified instant displacement from command. He 
preferred that the President should openly direct him to 
make the correction. Admitting that he decided in one 
night upon the measure, he added : "If I were to re- 
tract it of my own accord, it would imply that I myself 
thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the re- 
flection which the gravity of the point demanded." 
The inference is plain that Fremont was unwilling to 
lose the influence of his hasty step upon public opinion. 
But by this course he deliberately placed himself in an 
attitude of political hostility to the administration. 

The incident produced something of the agitation 
which the general had evidently counted upon. Radical 
antislavery men throughout the free States applauded 
his act and condemned the President, and military 
emancipation at once became a subject of excited dis- 
cussion. Even strong conservatives were carried away 
by the feeling that rebels would be but properly pun- 
ished by the loss of their slaves. To Senator Browning, 
the President's intimate personal friend, who enter- 
tained this feeling, Mr. Lincoln wrote a searching 
analysis of Fremont's proclamation and its dangers : 

"Yours of the seventeenth is just received ; and, com- 
ing from you, I confess it astonishes me. That you 
should object to my adhering to a law which you had 
assisted in making and presenting to me, less than a 
month before, is odd enough. But this is a very small 



LETTER TO BROWNING 239 

part. General Fremont's proclamation as to confis- 
cation of property and the liberation of slaves is 
purely political, and not within the range of military 
law or necessity. If a commanding general finds a 
necessity to seize the farm of a private owner, for a 
pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the 
right to do so, and to so hold it as long as the neces- 
sity lasts; and this is within military law, because 
within military necessity. But to say the farm shall 
no longer belong to the owner or his heirs forever, and 
this as well when the farm is not needed for military 
purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the 
savor of military law about it. And the same is true 
of slaves. If the general needs them he can seize them 
and use them, but when the need is past, it is not for 
him to fix their permanent future condition. That 
must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, 
and not by military proclamations. The proclamation 
in the point in question is simply 'dictatorship.' It 
assumes that the general may do anything he pleases — 
confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, 
as well as of disloyal ones. And going the whole 
figure, I have no doubt, would be more popular, with 
some thoughtless people, than that which has been 
done ! But I cannot assume this reckless position, nor 
allow others to assume it on my responsibility. 

"You speak of it as being the only means of saving 
the government. On the contrary, it is itself the sur- 
render of the government. Can it be pretended that it 
is any longer the government of the United States — 
any government of constitution and laws — wherein a 
general or a president may make permanent rules of 
property by proclamation? I do not say Congress 
might not, with propriety, pass a law on the point, just 
such as General Fremont proclaimed. I do not say I 



2 4 o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

might not, as a member of Congress, vote for it. What 
I object to is, that I, as President, shall expressly or 
impliedly seize and exercize the permanent legislative 
functions of the government. 

"So much as to principle. Now as to policy. No 
doubt the thing was popular in some quarters, and 
would have been more so if it had been a general dec- 
laration of emancipation. The Kentucky legislature 
would not budge till that proclamation was modified ; 
and General Anderson telegraphed me that on the 
news of General Fremont having actually issued deeds 
of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers 
threw down their arms and disbanded. I was so as- 
sured as to think it probable that the very arms we 
had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us. 
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose 
the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold 
Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against 
us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We 
would as well consent to separation at once, including 
the surrender of this capital." 

If it be objected that the President himself decreed 
military emancipation a year later, then it must be 
remembered that Fremont's proclamation differed in 
many essential particulars from the President's edict 
of January i, 1863. By that time, also, the entirely 
changed conditions justified a complete change of pol- 
icy; but, above all, the supreme reason of military 
necessity, upon which alone Mr. Lincoln based the 
constitutionality of his edict of freedom, was entirely 
wanting in the case of Fremont. 

The harvest of popularity which Fremont evidently 
hoped to secure by his proclamation was soon blighted 
by a new military disaster. The Confederate forces 
which had been united in the battle of Wilson's Creek 



FREMONT TAKES THE FIELD 241 

quickly became disorganized through the disagreement 
of their leaders and the want of provisions and other 
military supplies, and mainly returned to Arkansas 
and the Indian Territory, whence they had come. But 
General Price, with his Missouri contingent, gradually 
increased his followers, and as the Union retreat from 
Springfield to Rolla left the way open, began a north- 
ward march through the western part of the State to 
attack Colonel Mulligan, who, with about twenty- 
eight hundred Federal troops, intrenched himself at 
Lexington on the Missouri River. Secession sympathy 
was strong along the line of his march, and Price 
gained adherents so rapidly that on September 18 he 
was able to invest Mulligan's position with a somewhat 
irregular army numbering about twenty thousand. 
After a two days' siege, the garrison was compelled 
to surrender, through the exhaustion of the supply of 
water in their cisterns. The victory won. Price again 
immediately retreated southward, losing his army al- 
most as fast as he had collected it, made up, as it was, 
more in the spirit and quality of a sudden border foray 
than an organized campaign. 

For this new loss, Fremont was subjected to a 
shower of fierce criticism, which this time he sought 
to disarm by ostentatious announcements of immedi- 
ate activity. "I am taking the field myself," he tele- 
graphed, "and hope to destroy the enemy either before 
or after the junction of forces under McCulloch." 
Four days after the surrender, the St. Louis news- 
papers printed his order organizing an army of five 
divisions. The document made a respectable show of 
force on paper, claiming an aggregate of nearly thirty- 
nine thousand. In reality, however, being scattered 
and totally unprepared for the field, it possessed no 
such effective strength. For a month longer extrava- 



242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

gant newspaper reports stimulated the public with the 
hope of substantial results from Fremont's intended 
campaign. Before the end of that time, however, 
President Lincoln, under growing apprehension, sent 
Secretary of War Cameron and the adjutant-general 
of the army to Missouri to make a personal investiga- 
tion. Reaching Fremont's camp on October 13, they 
found the movement to be a mere forced, spasmodic 
display, without substantial strength, transportation, 
or coherent and feasible plan; and that at least two of 
the division commanders were without means to exe- 
cute the orders they had received, and utterly without 
confidence in their leader, or knowledge of his inten- 
tions. 

To give Fremont yet another chance, the Secretary 
of War withheld the President's order to relieve the 
general from command, which he had brought with 
him, on Fremont's insistence that a victory was really 
within his reach. When this hope also proved delusive, 
and suspicion was aroused that the general might be 
intending not only to deceive, but to defy the admin- 
istration, President Lincoln sent the following letter 
by a special friend to General Curtis, commanding at 
St. Louis: 

"Dear Sir: On receipt of this, with the accom- 
panying inclosures, you will take safe, certain, and 
suitable measures to have the inclosure addressed to 
Major-General Fremont delivered to him with all rea- 
sonable dispatch, subject to these conditions only, that 
if, when General Fremont shall be reached by the mes- 
senger — yourself, or any one sent by you — he shall 
then have, in personal command, fought and won a 
battle, or shall then be actually in a battle, or shall then 
be in the immediate presence of the enemy in expecta- 
tion of a battle, it is not to be delivered, but held for 



FREMONT'S REMOVAL 243 

further orders. After, and not till after, the delivery 
to General Fremont, let the inclosure addressed to 
General Hunter be delivered to him." 

The order of removal was delivered to Fremont on 
November 2. By that date he had reached Springfield, 
but had won no victory, fought no battle, and was not 
in the presence of the enemy. Two of his divisions 
were not yet even with him. Still laboring under the 
delusion, perhaps imposed on him by his scouts, his 
orders stated that the enemy was only a day's march 
distant, and advancing to attack him. .The inclosure 
mentioned in the President's letter to Curtis was an 
order to General David Hunter to relieve Fremont, 
When he arrived and assumed command the scouts 
he sent forward found no enemy within reach, and no 
such contingency of battle or hope of victory as had 
been rumored and assumed. 

Fremont's personal conduct in these disagreeable 
circumstances was entirely commendable. He took 
leave of the army in a short farewell order, couched 
in terms of perfect obedience to authority and cour- 
tesy to his successor, asking for him the same cordial 
support he had himself received. Nor did he by word 
or act justify the suspicions of insubordination for 
which some of his indiscreet adherents had given 
cause. Under the instructions President Lincoln had 
outlined in his order to Hunter, that general gave up 
the idea of indefinitely pursuing Price, and divided the 
army into two corps of observation, which were drawn 
back and posted, for the time being, at the two railroad 
termini of Rolla and Sedalia, to be recruited and pre- 
pared for further service. 



XVIII 

Blockade — Hatteras Inlet — Port Royal Captured — The 
Trent Affair — Lincoln Suggests Arbitration — Seward's 
Despatch — McClellan at Washington — Army of the Po- 
tomac — McClellan's Quarrel with Scott — Retirement 
of Scott — Lincoln's Memorandum — "All Quiet on the 
Potomac" — Conditions in Kentucky — Cameron's Visit 
to Sherman — East Tennessee — Instructions to Buell — 
Buell's Neglect — Halleck in Missouri 

FOLLOWING the fall of Fort Sumter, the navy of 
the United States was in no condition to enforce 
the blockade from Chesapeake Bay to the Rio Grande 
declared by Lincoln's proclamation of April 19. Of 
the forty-two vessels then in commission nearly all 
were on foreign stations. Another serious cause of 
weakness was that within a few days after the Sumter 
attack one hundred and twenty-four officers of the navy 
resigned, or were dismissed for disloyalty, and the 
number of such was doubled before the fourth of July. 
Yet by the strenuous efforts of the department in fit- 
ting out ships that had been laid up, in completing those 
under construction, and in extensive purchases and 
arming of all classes of vessels that could be put to use, 
from screw and side-wheel merchant steamers to ferry- 
boats and tugs, a legally effective blockade was estab- 
lished within a period of six months. A considerable 
number of new war-ships was also immediately placed 
under construction. The special session of Congress 
created a commission to study the subject of ironclads, 
244 



HATTERAS AND PORT ROYAL 245 

and on its recommendation three experimental vessels 
of this class were placed under contract. One of these, 
completed early in the following year, rendered a mo- 
mentous service, hereafter to be mentioned, and com- 
pletely revolutionized naval warfare. 

Meanwhile, as rapidly as vessels could be gathered 
and prepared, the Navy Department organized effec- 
tive expeditions to operate against points on the At- 
lantic coast. On August 29 a small fleet, under com- 
mand of Flag Officer Stringham, took possession of 
Hatteras Inlet, after silencing the forts the insurgents 
had erected to guard the entrance, and captured twenty- 
five guns and seven hundred prisoners. This success, 
achieved without the loss of a man to the Union fleet, 
was of great importance, opening, as it did, the way 
for a succession of victories in the interior waters of 
North Carolina early in the following year. 

A more formidable expedition, and still greater suc- 
cess soon followed. Early in November, Captain Du- 
Pont assembled a fleet of fifty sail, including transports, 
before Port Royal Sound. Forming a column of nine 
war-ships with a total of one hundred and twelve guns, 
the line steamed by the mid-channel between Fort 
Beauregard to the right, and Fort Walker to the left, 
the first of twenty and the second of twenty-three 
guns, each ship delivering its fire as it passed the forts. 
Turning at the proper point, they again gave broad- 
side after broadside while steaming out, and so re- 
peated their circular movement. The battle was de- 
cided when, on the third round, the forts failed to 
respond to the fire of the ships. When Commander 
Rodgers carried and planted the Stars and Stripes on 
the ramparts, he found them utterly deserted, every- 
thing having been abandoned by the flying garrisons. 
Further reconnaissance proved that the panic extended 



246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

itself over the whole network of sea islands between 
Charleston and Savannah, permitting the immediate 
occupation of the entire region, and affording a mili- 
tary base for both the navy and the army of incalcu- 
lable advantage in the further reduction of the coast. 

Another naval exploit, however, almost at the same 
time, absorbed greater public attention, and for a while 
created an intense degree of excitement and suspense. 
Ex-Senators J. M. Mason and John Slidell, having 
been accredited by the Confederate government as en- 
voys to European courts, had managed to elude the 
blockade and reach Havana. Captain Charles Wilkes, 
commanding the San Jacinto, learning that they were 
to take passage for England on the British mail 
steamer Trent, intercepted that vessel on November 8 
near the coast of Cuba, took the rebel emissaries pris- 
oner by the usual show of force, and brought them to 
the United States, but allowed the Trent to proceed on 
her voyage. The incident and alleged insult produced 
as great excitement in England as in the United States, 
and the British government began instant and signifi- 
cant preparations for war for what it hastily assumed 
to be a violation of international law and an outrage 
on the British flag. Instructions were sent to Lord 
Lyons, the British minister at Washington, to demand 
the release of the prisoners and a suitable apology; 
and, if this demand were not complied with within a 
single week, to close his legation and return to Eng- 
land. 

In the Northern States the capture was greeted with 
great jubilation. Captain Wilkes was applauded by the 
press ; his act was officially approved by the Secretary 
of the Navy, and the House of Representatives unani- 
mously passed a resolution thanking him for his "brave, 
adroit, and patriotic conduct." While the President 



THE TRENT AFFAIR 247 

and cabinet shared the first impulses of rejoicing, 
second thoughts impressed them with the grave nature 
of the international question involved, and the serious 
dilemma of disavowal or war precipitated by the im- 
perative British demand. It was fortunate that Secre- 
tary Seward and Lord Lyons were close personal 
friends, and still more that though British public 
opinion had strongly favored the rebellion, the Queen 
of England entertained the kindliest feelings for the 
American government. Under her direction, Prince 
Albert instructed the British cabinet to formulate and 
present the demand in the most courteous diplomatic 
language, while, on their part, the American President 
and cabinet discussed the affair in a temper of judicious 
reserve. 

President Lincoln's first desire was to refer the dif- ^"^ 
ficulty to friendly arbitration, and his mood is admir- 
ably expressed in the autograph experimental draft of 
a despatch suggesting this course. 

"The President is unwilling to believe," he wrote, 
"that her Majesty's government will press for a cate- 
gorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a 
partial record, in the making up of which he has been 
allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view 
of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's gov- 
ernment will consent to hear him ; yet this much he di- 
rects me to say, that this government has intended no 
affront to the British flag, or to the British nation ; nor 
has it intended to force into discussion an embarrassing 
question; all which is evident by the fact hereby 
asserted, that the act complained of was done by the 
officer without orders from, or expectation of, the gov- 
ernment. But, being done, it was no longer left to us 
to consider whether we might not, to avoid a contro- 
versy, waive an unimportant though a strict right ; be- 



248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cause we, too, as well as Great Britain, have a people 
justly jealous of their rights, and in whose presence 
our government could undo the act complained of only 
upon a fair showing that it was wrong, or at least very 
questionable. The United States government and 
people are still willing to make reparation upon such 
showing. 

"Accordingly, I am instructed by the President to 
inquire whether her Majesty's government will hear 
the United States upon the matter in question. The 
President desires, among other things, to bring into 
view, and have considered, the existing rebellion in 
the United States; the position Great Britain has as- 
sumed, including her Majesty's proclamation in rela- 
tion thereto; the relation the persons whose seizure 
is the subject of complaint bore to the United States, 
and the object of their voyage at the time they were 
seized ; the knowledge which the master of the Trent 
had of their relation to the United States, and of the 
object of their voyage, at the time he received them on 
board for the voyage ; the place of the seizure ; and the 
precedents and respective positions assumed in anal- 
ogous cases between Great Britain and the United 
States. 

"Upon a submission containing the foregoing facts, 
with those set forth in the before-mentioned despatch 
to your lordship, together with all other facts which 
either party may deem material, I am instructed to 
say the government of the United States will, if 
agreed to by her Majesty's government, go to such 
friendly arbitration as is usual among nations, and will 
abide the award." 

The most practised diplomatic pen in Europe could 
not have written a more dignified, courteous, or suc- 
cinct presentation of the case ; and yet, under the neces- 



McCLELLAN AT WASHINGTON 249 

sities of the moment, it was impossible to adopt this 
procedure. Upon full discussion, it was decided that 
war with Great Britain must be avoided, and Mr. Sew- 
ard wrote a despatch defending the course of Captain 
Wilkes up to the point where he permitted the Trent 
to proceed on her voyage. It was his further duty to 
have brought her before a prize court. Failing in this, 
he had left the capture incomplete under rules of inter- 
national law, and the American government had 
thereby lost the right and the legal evidence to establish 
the contraband character of the vessel and the persons 
seized. Under the circumstances, the prisoners were 
therefore willingly released. Excited American feel- 
ing was grievously disappointed at the result; but 
American good sense readily accommodated itself both 
to the correctness of the law expounded by the Secre- 
tary of State, and to the public policy that averted a 
great international danger; particularly as this de- 
cision forced Great Britain to depart from her own 
and to adopt the American traditions respecting this 
class of neutral rights. 

It has already been told how Captain George B. 
McClellan was suddenly raised in rank, at the very out- 
set of the war, first to a major-generalship in the three 
months' militia, then to the command of the military 
department of the Ohio; from that to a major-general- 
ship in the regular army ; and after his successful cam- 
paign in West Virginia was called to Washington and 
placed in command of the Division of the Potomac, 
which comprised all the troops in and around Washing- 
ton, on both sides of the river. Called thus to the cap- 
ital of the nation to guard it against the results of the 
disastrous battle of Bull Run, and to organize a new 
army for extended offensive operations, the surround- 
ing conditions naturally suggested to him that in all 



250 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

likelihood he would play a conspicuous part in the 
great drama of the Civil War. His ambition rose 
eagerly to the prospect. On the day on which he as- 
sumed command, July 2J, he wrote to his wife: 

"I find myself in a new and strange position here; 
President, cabinet, General Scott, and all, deferring to 
me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to 
have become the power of the land." 

And three days later: 

"They give me my way in everything, full swing 
and unbounded confidence. . . . Who would have 
thought, when we were married, that I should so soon 
be called upon to save my country?" 

And still a few days afterward : 

"I shall carry this thing en grande, and crush the 
rebels in one campaign." 

From the giddy elevation to which such an imagi- 
nary achievement raised his dreams, there was but one 
higher step, and his colossal egotism immediately 
mounted to occupy it. On August 9, just two weeks 
after his arrival in Washington, he wrote : 

"I would cheerfully take the dictatorship and agree 
to lay down my life when the country is saved;" while 
in the same letter he adds, with the most naive uncon- 
sciousness of his hallucination : "I am not spoiled by 
my unexpected new position." 

Coming to the national capital in the hour of deep- 
est public depression over the Bull Run defeat, Mc- 
Clellan was welcomed by the President, the cabinet, and 
General Scott with sincere friendship, by Congress 
with a hopeful eagerness, by the people with enthusi- 
asm, and by Washington society with adulation. Ex- 
ternally he seemed to justify such a greeting. He was 
young, handsome, accomplished, genial and winning 
in conversation and manner. He at once manifested 



ARMY OF THE POTOMAC 251 

great industry and quick decision, and speedily ex- 
hibited a degree of ability in army organization which 
was not equaled by any officer during the Civil War. 
Under his eye the stream of the new three years' regi- 
ments pouring into the city went to their camps, fell 
into brigades and divisions, were supplied with equip- 
ments, horses, and batteries, and underwent the routine 
of drill, tactics, and reviews, which, without the least 
apparent noise or friction, in three months made the 
Army of the Potomac a perfect fighting machine of 
over one hundred and fifty thousand men and more 
than two hundred guns. 

Recognizing his ability in this work, the govern- 
ment had indeed given him its full confidence, and per- 
mitted him to exercise almost unbounded authority; 
which he fully utilized in favoring his personal friends, 
and drawing to himself the best resources of the whole 
country in arms, supplies, and officers of education and 
experience. For a while his outward demeanor indi- 
cated respect and gratitude for the promotion and 
liberal favors bestowed upon him. But his phenomenal 
rise was fatal to his usefulness. The dream that he was 
to be the sole savior of his country, announced confi- 
dentially to his wife just two weeks after his arrival 
in Washington, never again left him so long as he con- 
tinued in command. Coupled with this dazzling vision, 
however, was soon developed the tormenting twofold 
hallucination : first, that everybody was conspiring to 
thwart him; and, second, that the enemy had from 
double to quadruple numbers to defeat him. 

For the first month he could not sleep for the night- 
mare that Beauregard's demoralized army had by a 
sudden bound from Manassas seized the city of Wash- 
ington. He immediately began a quarrel with General 
Scott, which, by the first of November, drove the old 



252 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hero into retirement and out of his pathway. The 
cabinet members who, wittingly or unwittingly, had 
encouraged him in this he some weeks later stigma- 
tized as a set of geese. Seeing that President Lincoln 
was kind and unassuming in discussing military ques- 
tions, McClellan quickly contracted the habit of ex- 
pressing contempt for him in his confidential letters; 
and the feeling rapidly grew until it reached a mark of 
open disrespect. The same trait manifested itself in his 
making exclusive confidants of only two or three of 
his subordinate generals, and ignoring the counsel of 
all the others ; and when, later on, Congress appointed 
a standing committee of leading senators and repre- 
sentatives to examine into the conduct of the war, he 
placed himself in a similar attitude respecting their 
inquiry and advice. 

McClellan's activity and judgment as an army or- 
ganizer naturally created great hopes that he would be 
equally efficient as a commander in the field. But these 
hopes were grievously disappointed. To his first great 
defect of estimating himself as the sole savior of the 
country, must at once be added the second, of his utter 
inability to form any reasonable judgment of the 
strength of the enemy in his front. On September 8, 
when the Confederate army at Manassas numbered 
forty-one thousand, he rated it at one hundred and 
thirty thousand. By the end of October that estimate 
had risen to one hundred and fifty thousand, to meet 
which he asked that his own force should be raised 
to an aggregate of two hundred and forty thousand, 
with a total of effectives of two hundred and eight 
thousand, and four hundred and eighty-eight guns. 
He suggested that to gather this force all other points 
should be left on the defensive; that the Army of the 
Potomac held the fate of the country in its hands ; that 



RETIREMENT OF SCOTT 253 

the advance should not be postponed beyond November 
25 ; and that a single will should direct the plan of ac- 
complishing a crushing defeat of the rebel army at 
Manassas. 

On the first of November the President, yielding at 
last to General Scott's urgent solicitation, issued the 
orders placing him on the retired list, and in his stead 
appointing General McClellan to the command of all 
the armies. The administration indulged the expecta- 
tion that at last "The Young Napoleon," as the news- 
papers often called him, would take advantage of the 
fine autumn weather, and, by a bold move with his sin- 
gle will and his immense force, outnumbering the en- 
emy nearly four to one, would redeem his promise to 
crush the army at Manassas and "save the country." 
But the November days came and went, as the October 
days had come and gone. McClellan and his brilliant 
staff galloped unceasingly from camp to camp, and 
review followed review, while autumn imperceptibly 
gave place to the cold and storms of winter; and still 
there was no sign of forward movement. 

Under his own growing impatience, as well as that 
of the public, the President, about the first of December, 
inquired pointedly, in a memorandum suggesting a plan 
of campaign, how long it would require to actually get 
in motion. McClellan answered: "By December 15, 
— probably 25" ; and put aside the President's sugges- 
tion by explaining : "I have now my mind actively 
turned toward another plan of campaign that I do not 
think at all anticipated by the enemy, nor by many of 
our own people." 

December 25 came, as November 25 had come, and 
still there was no plan, no preparation, no movement. 
Then McClellan fell seriously ill. By a spontaneous 
and most natural impulse, the soldiers of the various 



254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

camps began the erection of huts to shelter them from 
snow and storm. In a few weeks the Army of the Po- 
tomac was practically, if not by order, in winter quar- 
ters; and day after day the monotonous telegraphic 
phrase "All quiet on the Potomac" was read from 
Northern newspapers in Northern homes, until by mere 
iteration it degenerated from an expression of deep dis- 
appointment to a note of sarcastic criticism. 

While so unsatisfactory a condition of affairs existed 
in the first great military field east of the Alleghanies, 
the outlook was quite as unpromising both in the 
second — between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi 
— and in the third — west of the Mississippi. When 
the Confederates, about September i, 1861, invaded 
Kentucky, they stationed General Pillow at the 
strongly fortified town of Columbus on the Mississippi 
River, with about six thousand men ; General Buckner 
at Bowling Green, on the railroad north of Nashville, 
with five thousand; and General Zollicoffer, with six 
regiments, in eastern Kentucky, fronting Cumberland 
Gap. Up to that time there were no Union troops in 
Kentucky, except a few regiments of Home Guards. 
Now, however, the State legislature called for active 
help; and General Anderson, exercising nominal com- 
mand from Cincinnati, sent Brigadier-General Sher- 
man to Nashville to confront Buckner, and Brigadier- 
General Thomas to Camp Dick Robinson, to confront 
Zollicoffer. 

Neither side was as yet in a condition of force and 
preparation to take the aggressive. When, a month 
later, Anderson, on account of ill health turned over 
the command to Sherman, the latter had gathered only 
about eighteen thousand men, and was greatly dis- 
couraged by the task of defending three hundred miles 
of frontier with that small force. In an interview with 



BUELL SENT TO KENTUCKY 255 

Secretary of War Cameron, who called upon him on 
his return from Fremont's camp, about the middle of 
October, he strongly urged that he needed for immedi- 
ate defense sixty thousand, and for ultimate offense 
"two hundred thousand before we were done." 
"Great God!" exclaimed Cameron, "where are they to 
come from?" Both Sherman's demand and Cameron's 
answer were a pertinent comment on McClellan's policy 
of collecting the whole military strength of the country 
at Washington to fight the one great battle for which 
he could never get ready. 

Sherman was so distressed by the seeming magni- 
tude of his burden that he soon asked to be relieved; 
and when Brigadier-General Buell was sent to succeed 
him in command of that part of Kentucky lying east 
of the Cumberland River, it was the expectation of the 
President that he would devote his main attention and 
energy to the accomplishment of a specific object which 
Mr. Lincoln had very much at heart. 

Ever since the days in June, when President Lincoln 
had presided over the council of war which discussed 
and decided upon the Bull Run campaign, he had de- 
voted every spare moment of his time to the study of 
such military books and leading principles of the art 
of war as would aid him in solving questions that 
must necessarily come to himself for final decision. 
His acute perceptions, retentive memory, and unusual 
power of logic enabled him to make rapid progress 
in the acquisition of the fixed and accepted rules on 
which military writers agree. In this, as in other 
sciences, the main difficulty, of course, lies in applying 
fixed theories to variable conditions. When, however, 
we remember that at the outbreak of hostilities all the 
great commanders of the Civil War had experience 
only as captains and lieutenants, it is not strange 



256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that in speculative military problems the President's 
mature reasoning powers should have gained almost as 
rapidly by observation and criticism as theirs by prac- 
tice and experiment. The mastery he attained of the 
difficult art, and how intuitively correct was his grasp 
of military situations, has been attested since in the 
enthusiastic admiration of brilliant technical students, 
amply fitted by training and intellect to express an 
opinion, whose comment does not fall short of declar- 
ing Mr. Lincoln "the ablest strategist of the war." 

The President had early discerned what must be- 
come the dominating and decisive lines of advance in 
gaining and holding military control of the Southern 
States. Only two days after the battle of Bull Run, 
he had written a memorandum suggesting three prin- 
cipal objects for the army when reorganized : First, 
to gather a force to menace Richmond ; second, a move- 
ment from Cincinnati upon Cumberland Gap and East 
Tennessee; third, an expedition from Cairo against 
Memphis. In his eyes, the second of these objectives 
never lost its importance; and it was in fact substan- 
tially adopted by indirection and by necessity in the 
closing periods of the war. The eastern third of the 
State of Tennessee remained from the first stubbornly 
and devotedly loyal to the Union. At an election on 
June 8, 1 86 1, the people of twenty-nine counties, by 
more than two to one, voted against joining the Con- 
federacy; and the most rigorous military repression 
by the orders of Jefferson Davis and Governor Harris 
was necessary to prevent a general uprising against the 
rebellion. 

The sympathy of the President, even more than that 
of the whole North, went out warmly to these unfor- 
tunate Tennesseeans, and he desired to convert their 
mountain fastnesses into an impregnable patriotic 



EAST TENNESSEE 257 

stronghold. Had his advice been followed, it would 
have completely severed railroad communication, by 
way of the Shenandoah valley, Knoxville, and Chat- 
tanooga, between Virginia and the Gulf States, ac- 
complishing in the winter of 1861 what was not at- 
tained until two years later. Mr. Lincoln urged this 
in a second memorandum, made late in September ; and 
seeing that the principal objection to it lay in the long 
and difficult line of land transportation, his message to 
Congress of December 3, 1861, recommended, as a mil- 
itary measure, the construction of a railroad to connect 
Cincinnati, by way of Lexington, Kentucky, with that 
mountain region. 

A few days after the message, he personally went 
to the President's room in the Capitol building, and 
calling around him a number of leading senators and 
representatives, and pointing out on a map before them 
the East Tennessee region, said to them in substance : 

I am thoroughly convinced that the closing struggle 
of the war will occur somewhere in this mountain 
country. By our superior numbers and strength we 
will everywhere drive the rebel armies back from the 
level districts lying along the coast, from those lying 
south of the Ohio River, and from those lying east of 
the Mississippi River. Yielding to our superior force, 
they will gradually retreat to the more defensible 
mountain districts, and make their final stand in that 
part of the South where the seven States of Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, 
Kentucky, and West Virginia come together. The 
population there is overwhelmingly and devotedly 
loyal to the Union. The despatches from Brigadier- 
General Thomas of October 28 and November 5 
show that, with four additional good regiments, he is 
willing to undertake the campaign and is confident 



258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he can take immediate possession. Once established, 
the people will rally to his support, and by building 
a railroad, over which to forward him regular supplies 
and needed reinforcements from time to time, we can 
hold it against all attempts to dislodge us, and at the 
same time menace the enemy in any one of the States 
I have named. 

While his hearers listened with interest, it was evi- 
dent that their minds were still full of the prospect 
of a great battle in Virginia, the capture of Richmond, 
and an early suppression of the rebellion. Railroad 
building appeared to them altogether too slow an opera- 
tion of war. To show how sagacious was the Presi- 
dent's advice, we may anticipate by recalling that in the 
following summer General Buell spent as much time, 
money, and military strength in his attempted march 
from Corinth to East Tennessee as would have amply 
sufficed to build the line from Lexington to Knoxville 
recommended by Mr. Lincoln — the general's effort re- 
sulting only in his being driven back to Louisville; 
that in 1863, Burnside, under greater difficulties, made 
the march and successfully held Knoxville, even with- 
out a railroad, which Thomas with a few regiments 
could have accomplished in 1861 ; and that in the final 
collapse of the rebellion, in the spring of 1865, the 
beaten armies of both Johnston and Lee attempted to 
retreat for a last stand to this same mountain region 
which Mr. Lincoln pointed out in December, 1861. 

Though the President received no encouragement 
from senators and representatives in his plan to take 
possession of East Tennessee, that object was specially 
enjoined in the instructions to General Buell when he 
was sent to command in Kentucky. 

"It so happens that a large majority of the inhab- 
itants of eastern Tennessee are in favor of the Union ; 



EAST TENNESSEE 259 

it therefore seems proper that you should remain on 
the defensive on the line from Louisville to Nashville, 
while you throw the mass of your forces by rapid 
marches by Cumberland Gap or Walker's Gap on 
Knoxville, in order to occupy the railroad at that point, 
and thus enable the loyal citizens of eastern Tennessee 
to rise, while you at the same time cut off the railway 
communication between eastern Virginia and the Mis- 
sissippi." 

Three times within the same month McClellan re- 
peated this injunction to Buell with additional em- 
phasis. Senator Andrew Johnson and Representative 
Horace Maynard telegraphed him from Washington: 

"Our people are oppressed and pursued as beasts 
of the forest; the government must come to their re- 
lief." 

Buell replied, keeping the word of promise to the 
ear, but, with his ambition fixed on a different cam- 
paign, gradually but doggedly broke it to the hope. 
When, a month later, he acknowledged that his prepa- 
rations and intent were to move against Nashville, the 
President wrote him : 

"Of the two, I would rather have a point on the rail- 
road south of Cumberland Gap than Nashville. First, 
because it cuts a great artery of the enemy's communi- 
cation, which Nashville does not ; and. secondly, be- 
cause it is in the midst of loyal people, who would 
rally around it, while Nashville is not. . . . But 
my distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are 
being hanged and driven to despair, and even now, I 
fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake 
of personal protection. In this we lose the most valu- 
able stake we have in the South." 

McClellan's comment amounted to a severe censure, 
and this was quickly followed by an almost positive 



260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

command to "advance on eastern Tennessee at once." 
Again Buell promised compliance, only, however, again 
to report in a few weeks his conviction "that an advance 
into East Tennessee is impracticable at this time on 
any scale which would be sufficient." It is difficult to 
speculate upon the advantages lost by this unwilling- 
ness of a commander to obey instructions. To say 
nothing of the strategical value of East Tennessee to 
the Union, the fidelity of its people is shown in the 
reports sent to the Confederate government that "the 
whole country is now in a state of rebellion"; that 
"civil war has broken out in East Tennessee" ; and that 
"they look for the reestablishment of the Federal au- 
thority in the South with as much confidence as the 
Jews look for the coming of the Messiah." 

Henry W. Halleck, born in 1815, graduated from 
West Point in 1839, who, after distinguished service 
in the Mexican war, had been brevetted captain of 
Engineers, but soon afterward resigned from the army 
to pursue the practice of law in San Francisco, was, 
perhaps, the best professionally equipped officer among 
the number of those called by General Scott in the 
summer of 1861 to assume important command in the 
Union army. It is probable that Scott intended he 
should succeed himself as general-in-chief ; but when he 
reached Washington the autumn was already late, and 
because of Fremont's conspicuous failure it seemed 
necessary to send Halleck to the Department of the 
Missouri, which, as reconstituted, was made to include, 
in addition to several northwestern States, Missouri 
and Arkansas, and so much of Kentucky as lay west 
of the Cumberland River. This change of department 
lines indicates the beginning of what soon became a 
dominant feature of military operations; namely, that 
instead of the vast regions lying west of the Mississippi, 



HALLECK IN MISSOURI 261 

the great river itself, and the country lying immedi- 
ately adjacent to it on either side, became the third 
principal field of strategy and action, under the neces- 
sity of opening and holding it as a great military and 
commercial highway. 

While the intention of the government to open the 
Mississippi River by a powerful expedition received 
additional emphasis through Halleck's appointment, 
that general found no immediate means adequate to the 
task when he assumed command at St. Louis. Fre- 
mont's regime had left the whole department in the 
most deplorable confusion. Halleck reported that he 
had no army, but, rather, a military rabble to com- 
mand, and for some weeks devoted himself with energy 
and success to bringing order out of the chaos left him 
by his predecessor. A large element of his difficulty 
lay in the fact that the population of the whole State 
was tainted with disloyalty to a degree which ren- 
dered Missouri less a factor in the larger questions of 
general army operations, than from the beginning to 
the end of the war a local district of bitter and relent- 
less factional hatred and guerrilla or, as the term was 
constantly employed, "bushwhacking" warfare, inten- 
sified and kept alive by annual roving Confederate 
incursions from Arkansas and the Indian Territory 
in desultory summer campaigns. 



XIX 

Lincoln Directs Cooperation — Halleck andBnell — Ulysses 
S. Grant — Grant's Demonstration — Victory at Mill 
River — Fort Henry — Fort Donelson — Buell's Tardi- 
ness — Halleck's Activity — Victory of Pea Ridge — Hal- 
leck Receives General Command — Pittsburg Landing 
— Island No. 10 — Halleck's Corinth Campaign — Hal- 
leck's Mistakes 

TOWARD the end of December, 1861, the pros- 
pects of the administration became very gloomy. 
McClellan had indeed organized a formidable army at 
Washington, but it had done nothing to efface the 
memory of the Bull Run defeat. On the contrary, 
a practical blockade of the Potomac by rebel batteries 
on the Virginia shore, and another small but irritating 
defeat at Ball's Bluff, greatly heightened public im- 
patience. The necessary surrender of Mason and 
Slidell to England was exceedingly unpalatable. Gov- 
ernment expenditures had risen to $2,000,000 a day, 
and a financial crisis was imminent. Buell would not 
move into East Tennessee, and Halleck seemed pow- 
erless in Missouri. Added to this, McClellan's illness 
completed a stagnation of military affairs both east and 
west. Congress was clamoring for results, and its 
joint Committee on the Conduct of the War was push- 
ing a searching inquiry into the causes of previous 
defeats. 

To remove this inertia, President Lincoln directed 
specific questions to the Western commanders. "Are 
262 



HALLECK AND BUELL 263 

General Buell and yourself in concert?" he telegraphed 
Halleck on December 31. And next day he wrote: 

"I am very anxious that, in case of General Buell's 
moving toward Nashville, the enemy shall not be 
greatly reinforced, and I think there is danger he will 
be from Columbus. It seems to me that a real or 
feigned attack on Columbus from up-river at the same 
time would either prevent this, or compensate for it by 
throwing Columbus into our hands." 

Similar questions also went to Buell, and their re- 
plies showed that no concert, arrangement, or plans 
existed, and that Halleck was not ready to cooperate. 
The correspondence started by the President's inquiry 
for the first time clearly brought out an estimate of 
the Confederate strength opposed to a southward 
movement in the West. Since the Confederate inva- 
sion of Kentucky on September 4, the rebels had so 
strongly fortified Columbus on the Mississippi River 
that it came to be called the "Gibraltar of the West," 
and now had a garrison of twenty thousand to hold it ; 
while General Buckner was supposed to have a force 
of forty thousand at Bowling Green on the railroad 
between Louisville and Nashville. For more than a 
month Buell and Halleck had been aware that a joint 
river and land expedition southward up the Tennessee 
or the Cumberland River, which would outflank both 
positions and cause their evacuation, was practicable 
with but little opposition. Yet neither Buell nor Hal- 
leck had exchanged a word about it, or made the slight- 
est preparation to begin it; each being busy in his own 
field, and with his own plans. Even now, when the 
President had started the subject, Halleck replied that 
it would be bad strategy for himself to move against 
Columbus, or Buell against Bowling Green ; but he had 
nothing to say about a Tennessee River expedition, or 



264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cooperation with Buell to effect it, except by indirectly 
complaining that to withdraw troops from Missouri 
would risk the loss of that State. 

The President, however, was no longer satisfied 
with indecision and excuses, and telegraphed to Buell 
on January 7 : 

"Please name as early a day as you safely can on or 
before which you can be ready to move southward in 
concert with Major-General Halleck. Delay is ruining 
us, and it is indispensable for me to have something 
definite. I send a like despatch to Major-General 
Halleck." 

To this Buell made no direct reply, while Halleck 
answered that he had asked Buell to designate a date 
for a demonstration, and explained two days later: 
"I can make, with the gunboats and available troops, 
a pretty formidable demonstration, but no real attack." 
In point of fact, Halleck had on the previous day, Jan- 
uary 6, written to Brigadier-General U. S. Grant: "I 
wish you to make a demonstration in force"; and he 
added full details, to which Grant responded on Jan- 
uary 8 : "Your instructions of the sixth were received 
this morning, and immediate preparations made for 
carrying them out" ; also adding details on his part. 

Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, was 
graduated from West Point in 1843, an d bre vetted cap- 
tain for gallant conduct in the Mexican War; but re- 
signed from the army and was engaged with his father 
in a leather store at Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War 
broke out. Employed by the governor of Illinois a few 
weeks at Springfield to assist in organizing militia regi- 
ments under the President's first call, Grant wrote a let- 
ter to the War Department at Washington tendering 
his services, and saying: "I feel myself competent to 
command a regiment, if the President in his judgment 



GRANT'S DEMONSTRATION 265 

should see fit to intrust one to me." For some reason, 
never explained, this letter remained unanswered, 
though the department was then and afterward in con- 
stant need of educated and experienced officers. A few 
weeks later, however, Governor Yates commissioned 
him colonel of one of the Illinois three years' regi- 
ments. From that time until the end of 1861, Grant, 
by constant and specially meritorious service, rose in 
rank to brigadier-general and to the command of the 
important post of Cairo, Illinois, having meanwhile, 
on November 7, won the battle of Belmont on the Mis- 
souri shore opposite Columbus. 

The "demonstration" ordered by Halleck was prob- 
ably intended only as a passing show of activity ; but 
it was executed by Grant, though under strict orders 
to "avoid a battle," with a degree of promptness and 
earnestness that drew after it momentous consequences. 
He pushed a strong reconnaissance by eight thousand 
men within a mile or two of Columbus, and sent three 
gunboats up the Tennessee River, which drew the fire 
of Fort Henry. The results of the combined expedi- 
tion convinced Grant that a real movement in that 
direction was practicable, and he hastened to St. Louis 
to lay his plan personally before Halleck. At first 
that general would scarcely listen to it ; but, returning 
to Cairo, Grant urged it again and again, and the 
rapidly changing military conditions soon caused Hal- 
leck to realize its importance. 

Within a few days, several items of interesting infor- 
mation reached Halleck : that General Thomas, in 
eastern Kentucky, had won a victory over the rebel 
General Zollicoffer, capturing his fortified camp on 
Cumberland River, annihilating his army of over ten 
regiments, and fully exposing Cumberland Gap; that 
the Confederates were about to throw strong reinforce- 



266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ments into Columbus; that seven formidable Union 
ironclad river gunboats were ready for service; and 
that a rise of fourteen feet had taken place in the Ten- 
nessee River, greatly weakening the rebel batteries on 
that stream and the Cumberland. The advantages on 
the one hand, and the dangers on the other, which these 
reports indicated, moved Halleck to a sudden decision. 
When Grant, on January 28, telegraphed him : "With 
permission, I will take Fort Henry on the Tennessee, 
and establish and hold a large camp there," Halleck 
responded on the thirtieth: "Make your preparations 
to take and hold Fort Henry." 

It would appear that Grant's preparations were al- 
ready quite complete when he received written in- 
structions by mail on February 1, for on the next day 
he started fifteen thousand men on transports, and on 
February 4 himself followed with seven gunboats 
under command of Commodore Foote. Two days 
later, Grant had the satisfaction of sending a double 
message in return : "Fort Henry is ours. ... I 
shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the eighth." 

Fort Henry had been an easy victory. The rebel 
commander, convinced that he could not defend the 
place, had early that morning sent away his garrison 
of three thousand on a retreat to Fort Donelson, and 
simply held out during a two hours' bombardment 
until they could escape capture. To take Fort Donel- 
son was a more serious enterprise. That stronghold, 
lying twelve miles away on the Cumberland River, was 
a much larger work, with a garrison of six thousand, 
and armed with seventeen fieavy and forty-eight field 
guns. If Grant could have marched immediately to an 
attack of the combined garrisons, there would have 
been a chance of quick success. But the high water 
presented unlooked-for obstacles, and nearly a week 



FORT DONELSON 267 

elapsed before his army began stretching itself cau- 
tiously around the three miles of Donelson's intrench- 
ments. During this delay, the conditions became 
greatly changed. When the Confederate General 
Albert Sidney Johnston received news that Fort Henry 
had fallen, he held a council at Bowling Green with his 
subordinate generals Hardee and Beauregard, and see- 
ing that the Union success would, if not immediately 
counteracted, render both Nashville and Columbus un- 
tenable, resolved, to use his own language, "To de- 
fend Nashville at Donelson." 

An immediate retreat was begun from Bowling 
Green to Nashville, and heavy reinforcements were 
ordered to the garrison of Fort Donelson. It happened, 
therefore, that when Grant was ready to begin his as- 
sault, the Confederate garrison with its reinforcements 
outnumbered his entire army. To increase the discour- 
agement, the attack by gunboats on the Cumberland 
River on the afternoon of February 14 was repulsed, 
seriously damaging two of them, and a heavy sortie 
from the fort threw the right of Grant's investing line 
into disorder. Fortunately, General Halleck at St. 
Louis strained all his energies to send reinforcements, 
and these arrived in time to restore Grant's advantage 
in numbers. 

Serious disagreement among the Confederate com- 
manders also hastened the fall of the place. On Feb- 
ruary 16, General Buckner, to whom the senior officers 
had turned over the command, proposed an armistice, 
and the appointment of commissioners to agree on 
terms of capitulation. To this Grant responded with 
a characteristic spirit of determination: "No terms 
except unconditional and immediate surrender can be 
accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your 
works." Buckner complained that the terms were un- 



268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

generous and unchivalric, but that necessity compelled 
him to accept them ; and Grant telegraphed Halleck on 
February 16: "We have taken Fort Donelson, and 
from twelve to fifteen thousand prisoners." The senior 
Confederate generals, Pillow and Floyd, and a portion 
of the garrison had escaped by the Cumberland River 
during the preceding night. 

Since the fall of Fort Llenry on February 6, a lively 
correspondence had been going on, in which General 
Halleck besought Buell to come with his available 
forces, assist in capturing Donelson, and command 
the column up the Cumberland to cut off both Colum- 
bus and Nashville. President Lincoln, scanning the 
news with intense solicitude, and losing no opportu- 
nity to urge effective cooperation, telegraphed Halleck : 

"You have Fort Donelson safe, unless Grant shall be 
overwhelmed from outside; to prevent which latter 
will, I think, require all the vigilance, energy, and skill 
of yourself and Buell, acting in full cooperation. Co- 
lumbus will not get at Grant, but the force from Bowl- 
ing Green will. They hold the railroad from Bowling 
Green to within a few miles of Fort Donelson, with 
the bridge at Clarksville undisturbed. It is unsafe to 
rely that they will not dare to expose Nashville to 
Buell. A small part of their force can retire slowly 
toward Nashville, breaking up the railroad as they go, 
and keep Buell out of that city twenty days. Mean- 
time, Nashville will be abundantly defended by forces 
from all south and perhaps from here at Manassas. 
Could not a cavalry force from General Thomas on the 
upper Cumberland dash across, almost unresisted, and 
cut the railroad at or near Knoxville, Tennessee? In 
the midst of a bombardment at Fort Donelson, why 
could not a gunboat run up and destroy the bridge at 
Clarksville? Our success or failure at Fort Donelson 



HALLECK'S ACTIVITY 269 

is vastly important, and I beg you to put your soul in 
the effort. I send a copy of this to Buell." 

This telegram abundantly shows with what minute 
understanding and accurate judgment the President 
comprehended military conditions and results in the 
West. Buell, however, was too intent upon his own 
separate movement to seize the brilliant opportunity 
offered him. As he only in a feeble advance followed 
up the retreating Confederate column from Bowling 
Green to Nashville, Halleck naturally appropriated to 
himself the merit of the campaign, and telegraphed to 
Washington on the day after the surrender : 

"Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major-generals of 
volunteers, and give me command in the West. I ask 
this in return for Forts Henry and Donelson." 

The eagerness of General Halleck for superior com- 
mand in the West was, to say the least, very pardon- 
able. A vast horizon of possibilities was opening up to 
his view. Two other campaigns under his direction 
were exciting his liveliest hopes. Late in December 
he had collected an army of ten thousand at the rail- 
road terminus at Rolla, Missouri, under command of 
Brigadier-General Curtis, for the purpose of scatter- 
ing the rebel forces under General Price at Spring- 
field, or driving them out of the State. Despite the 
hard winter weather, Halleck urged on the move- 
ment with almost peremptory orders, and Curtis exe- 
cuted the intentions of his chief with such alacrity that 
Price was forced into a rapid and damaging retreat 
from Springfield toward Arkansas. While forcing 
this enterprise in the southwest, Halleck had also deter- 
mined on an important campaign in southeast Mis- 
souri. 

Xext to Columbus, which the enemy evacuated on 
March 2, the strongest Confederate fortifications on 



270 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Mississippi River were at Island No. 10, about 
forty miles farther to the south. To operate against 
these, he planned an expedition under Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Pope to capture the town of New Madrid as a pre- 
liminary step. Columbus and Nashville were almost 
sure to fall as the result of Donelson. If now he could 
bring his two Missouri campaigns into a combination 
with two swift and strong Tennessee expeditions, while 
the enemy was in scattered retreat, he could look for- 
ward to the speedy capture of Memphis. But to the 
realization of such a project, the hesitation and slow- 
ness of Buell were a serious hindrance. That general 
had indeed started a division under Nelson to Grant's 
assistance, but it was not yet in the Cumberland when 
Donelson surrendered. Halleck's demand for en- 
larged power, therefore, became almost imperative. 
He pleaded earnestly with Buell : 

"I have asked the President to make you a major- 
general. Come down to the Cumberland and take com- 
mand. The battle of the West is to be fought in that 
vicinity. . . . There will be no battle at Nash- 
ville." His telegrams to McClellan were more urgent. 
"Give it [the Western Division] to me, and I will 
split secession in twain in one month." And again: 
"I must have command of the armies in the West. 
Hesitation and delay are losing us the golden opportu- 
nity. Lay this before the President and Secretary of 
War. May I assume the command ? Answer quickly." 

But McClellan was in no mood to sacrifice the ambi- 
tion of his intimate friend and favorite, General Buell, 
and induced the President to withhold his consent ; and 
while the generals were debating by telegraph, Nelson's 
division of the army of Buell moved up the Cumber- 
land and occupied Nashville under the orders of Grant. 
Halleck, however, held tenaciously to his views and 



PEA RIDGE 271 

requests, explaining to McClellan that he himself pro- 
posed going to Tennessee : 

"That is now the great strategic line of the west- 
ern campaign, and I am surprised that General Buell 
should hesitate to reinforce me. He was too late at 
Fort Donelson. . . . Believe me, General, you 
make a serious mistake in having three independent 
commands in the West. There never will and never 
can be any cooperation at the critical moment ; all mili- 
tary history proves it." 

This insistence had greater point because of the news 
received that Curtis, energetically following Price into 
Arkansas, had won a great Union victory at Pea 
Ridge, between March 5 and 8, over the united forces 
of Price and McCulloch, commanded by Van Dorn. 
At this juncture, events at Washington, hereafter to be 
mentioned, caused a reorganization of military com- 
mands, and President Lincoln's Special War Order 
No. 3 consolidated the western departments of Hunter, 
Halleck, and Buell, as far east as Knoxville, Tennessee, 
under the title of the Department of the Mississippi, 
and placed General Halleck in command of the whole. 
Meanwhile, Halleck had ordered the victorious Union 
army at Fort Donelson to move forward to Savannah 
on the Tennessee River under the command of Grant ; 
and, now that he had superior command, directed Buell 
to march all of his forces not required to defend Nash- 
ville "as rapidly as possible" to the same point. Hal- 
leck was still at St. Louis; and through the indecision 
of his further orders, through the slowness of Buell's 
march, and through the unexplained inattention of 
Grant, the Union armies narrowly escaped a serious 
disaster, which, however, the determined courage of 
the troops and subordinate officers turned into a most 
important victory. 



272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The "golden opportunity" so earnestly pointed out 
by Halleck, while not entirely lost, was nevertheless 
seriously diminished by the hesitation and delay of 
the Union commanders to agree upon some plan of 
effective cooperation. When, at the fall of Fort Donel- 
son, the Confederates retreated from Nashville toward 
Chattanooga, and from Columbus toward Jackson, a 
swift advance by the Tennessee River could have kept 
them separated; but as that open highway was not 
promptly followed in force, the flying Confederate de- 
tachments found abundant leisure to form a junction. 

Grant reached Savannah, on the east bank of the 
Tennessee River, about the middle of March, and in a 
few days began massing troops at Pittsburg Landing, 
six miles farther south, on the west bank of the Ten- 
nessee; still keeping his headquarters at Savannah, to 
await the arrival of Buell and his army. During the 
next two weeks he reported several times that the en- 
emy was concentrating at Corinth, Mississippi, an im- 
portant railroad crossing twenty miles from Pittsburg 
Landing, the estimate of their number varying from 
forty to eighty thousand. All this time his mind was 
so filled with an eager intention to begin a march upon 
Corinth, and a confidence that he could win a victory 
by a prompt attack, that he neglected the essential pre- 
caution of providing against an attack by the enemy, 
which at the same time was occupying the thoughts of 
the Confederate commander General Johnston. 

General Grant was therefore greatly surprised on 
the morning of April 6, when he proceeded from 
Savannah to Pittsburg Landing, to learn the cause of 
a fierce cannonade. He found that the Confederate 
army, forty thousand strong, was making an unex- 
pected and determined attack in force on the Union 
camp, whose five divisions numbered a total of about 



PITTSBURG LANDING 273 

thirty-three thousand. The Union generals had made 
no provision against such an attack. No intrenchments 
had been thrown up, no plan or understanding ar- 
ranged. A few preliminary picket skirmishes had, 
indeed, put the Union front on the alert, but the com- 
manders of brigades and regiments were not prepared 
for the impetuous rush with which the three successive 
Confederate lines began the main battle. On their part, 
the enemy did not realize their hope of effecting a com- 
plete surprise, and the nature of the ground was so 
characterized by a network of local roads, alternating 
patches of woods and open fields, miry hollows and 
abrupt ravines, that the lines of conflict were quickly 
broken into short, disjointed movements that admitted 
of little or no combined or systematic direction. The 
effort of the Union officers was necessarily limited to a 
continuous resistance to the advance of the enemy, 
from whatever direction it came ; that of the Confeder- 
ate leaders to the general purpose of forcing the Union 
lines away from Pittsburg Landing so that they might 
destroy the Federal transports and thus cut off all 
means of retreat. In this effort, although during the 
whole of Sunday, April 6, the Union front had been 
forced back a mile and a half, the enemy had not en- 
tirely succeeded. About sunset. General Beauregard, 
who, by the death of General Johnston during the 
afternoon, succeeded to the Confederate command. 
gave orders to suspend the attack, in the firm expecta- 
tion, however, that he would be able to complete his 
victory the next morning. 

But in this hope he was disappointed. • During the 
day the vanguard of Buell's army had arrived on the 
opposite bank of the river. Before nightfall one of 
his brigades was ferried across and deployed in front 
of the exultant enemy. During the night and early 



274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Monday morning three superb divisions of Buell's 
army, about twenty thousand fresh, well-drilled troops, 
wereadvanced to the front under Buell's own direction; 
and by three o'clock of that day the two wings of the 
Union army were once more in possession of all the 
ground that had been lost on the previous day, while 
the foiled and disorganized Confederates were in full 
retreat upon Corinth. The severity of the battle may 
be judged by the losses. In the Union army: killed, 
1754; wounded, 8408; missing, 2885. In the Confed- 
erate army : killed, 1728 ; wounded, 8012 ; missing, 954. 
Having comprehended the uncertainty of Buell's 
successful junction with Grant, Halleck must have re- 
ceived tidings of the final victory at Pittsburg Landing 
with emotions of deep satisfaction. To this was now 
joined the further gratifying news that the enemy on 
that same momentous April 7 had surrendered Island 
No. 10, together with six or seven thousand Confeder- 
ate troops, including three general officers, to the com- 
bined operations of General Pope and Flag-Officer 
Foote. Full particulars of these two important victo- 
ries did not reach Halleck for several days. Following 
previous suggestions, Pope and Foote promptly moved 
their gunboats and troops down the river to the next 
Confederate stronghold, Fort Pillow, where extensive 
fortifications, aided by an overflow of the adjacent 
river banks, indicated strong resistance and consider- 
able delay. When all the conditions became more 
fully known, Halleck at length adopted the resolution, 
to which he had been strongly leaning for some time, 
to take the field himself. About April 10 he proceeded 
from St. Louis to Pittsburg Landing, and on the fif- 
teenth ordered Pope with his army to join him there, 
which the latter, having his troops already on trans- 
ports, succeeded in accomplishing by April 22. Hal- 



HALLECK'S MISTAKES 275 

leek immediately effected a new organization, combin- 
ing the armies of the Tennessee, of the Ohio, and of 
the Mississippi into respectively his right wing, center, 
and left wing. He assumed command of the whole 
himself, and nominally made Grant second in com- 
mand. Practically, however, he left Grant so little 
authority or work that the latter felt himself slighted, 
and asked leave to proceed to another field of duty. 

It required but a few weeks to demonstrate that how- 
ever high were Halleck's professional acquirements in 
other respects, he was totally unfit for a commander 
in the field. Grant had undoubtedly been careless in 
not providing against the enemy's attack at Pittsburg 
Landing. Halleck, on the other extreme, was now 
doubly overcautious in his march upon Corinth. From 
first to last, his campaign resembled a siege. With over 
one hundred thousand men under his hand, he moved 
at a snail's pace, building roads and breastworks, and 
consuming more than a month in advancing a distance 
of twenty miles; during which period Beauregard 
managed to collect about fifty thousand effective Con- 
federates and construct defensive fortifications with 
equal industry around Corinth. When, on May 29, 
Halleck was within assaulting distance of the rebel in- 
trenchments, Beauregard had leisurely removed his 
sick and wounded, destroyed or carried away his stores, 
and that night finally evacuated the place, leaving Hal- 
leck to reap, practically, a barren victory. 

Nor were the general's plans and actions any more 
fruitful during the following six weeks. He wasted 
the time and energy of his soldiers multiplying useless 
fortifications about Corinth. He despatched Buell's 
wing of the army on a march toward eastern Tennes- 
see, but under such instructions and limitations that 
long before reaching its objective it was met by a Con- 



276 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

federate army under General Bragg, and forced into 
a retrograde movement which carried it back to Louis- 
ville. More deplorable, however, than either of these 
errors of judgment was Halleck's neglect to seize the 
opportune moment when, by a vigorous movement in 
cooperation with the brilliant naval victories under 
Flag-Officer Farragut, commanding a formidable fleet 
of Union war-ships, he might have completed the over- 
shadowing military task of opening the Mississippi 
River. 



XX 



The Blockade — Hatteras Inlet — Roanoke Island — Fort 
Pulaski — Merrimac and Monitor — The Cumberland 
Sunk — The Congress Burned — Battle of the Ironclads 
— Flag-Officer Farragut — Forts Jackson and St. Philip 
— New Orleans Captured — Farragut at Vicksburg — 
Farragut's Second Expedition to Vicksburg — Return 
to New Orleans 

IN addition to its heavy work of maintaining the 
Atlantic blockade, the navy of the United States 
contributed signally toward the suppression of the 
rebellion by three brilliant victories which it gained 
during the first half of the year 1862. After careful 
preparation during several months, a joint expedition 
under the command of General Ambrose E. Burnside 
and Flag-Officer Goldsborough, consisting of more 
than twelve thousand men and twenty ships of war, 
accompanied by numerous transports, sailed from Fort 
Monroe on January 11, with the object of occupying 
the interior waters of the North Carolina coast. Be- 
fore the larger vessels could effect their entrance 
through Hatteras Inlet, captured in the previous 
August, a furious storm set in, which delayed the ex- 
pedition nearly a month. By February 7, however, 
that and other serious difficulties were overcome, and 
on the following day the expedition captured Roanoke 
Island, and thus completely opened the whole interior 
water-system of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds to the 
easy approach of the Union fleet and forces. 
277 



278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

From Roanoke Island as a base, minor expeditions 
within a short period effected the destruction of the not 
very formidable fleet which the enemy had been able to 
organize, and the reduction of Fort Macon and the 
rebel defenses of Elizabeth City, New Berne, and other 
smaller places. An eventual advance upon Goldsboro' 
formed part of the original plan ; but, before it could be 
executed, circumstances intervened effectually to thwart 
that object. 

While the gradual occupation of the North Carolina 
coast was going on, two other expeditions of a similar 
nature were making steady progress. One of them, 
under the direction of General Quincy A. Gillmore, 
carried on a remarkable siege operation against Fort 
Pulaski, standing on an isolated sea marsh at the mouth 
of the Savannah River. Here not only the difficulties 
of approach, but the apparently insurmountable obsta- 
cle of making the soft, unctuous mud sustain heavy bat- 
teries, was overcome, and the fort compelled to sur- 
render on April u, after an effective bombardment. 
The second was an expedition of nineteen ships, which, 
within a few days during the month of March, without 
serious resistance, occupied the whole remaining At- 
lantic coast southward as far as St. Augustine. 

When, at the outbreak of the rebellion, the navy-yard 
at Norfolk, Virginia, had to be abandoned to the en- 
emy, the destruction at that time attempted by Com- 
modore Paulding remained very incomplete. Among 
the vessels set on fire, the screw-frigate Merrimac, 
which had been scuttled, was burned only to the water's 
edge, leaving her hull and machinery entirely unin- 
jured. In due time she was raised by the Confederates, 
covered with a sloping roof of railroad iron, provided 
with a huge wedge-shaped prow of cast iron, and armed 
with a formidable battery of ten guns. Secret infor- 



MERRIMAC AND MONITOR 279 

mation came to the Navy Department of the progress 
of this work, and such a possibility was kept in mind 
by the board of officers that decided upon the con- 
struction of the three experimental ironclads in Sep- 
tember, 1 86 1. 

The particular one of these three especially intended 
for this peculiar emergency was a ship of entirely novel 
design, made by the celebrated inventor John Ericsson, 
a Swede by birth, but American by adoption — a man 
who combined great original genius with long scientific 
study and experience. His invention may be most 
quickly described as having a small, very low hull, cov- 
ered by a much longer and wider flat deck only a foot 
or two above the water-line, upon which was placed a 
revolving iron turret twenty feet in diameter, nine feet 
high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were 
two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolv- 
ing with the turret. This unique naval structure was 
promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the 
designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once 
recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad ; but 
compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her 
iron turret would resist shot and shell, and that the thin 
edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark 
to an enemy's guns : in other words, that she was no 
cruiser, but would prove a formidable floating battery ; 
and this belief she abundantly justified. 

The test of her fighting qualities was attended by 
what almost suggested a miraculous coincidence. On 
Saturday, March 8, 1862, about noon, a strange-look- 
ing craft resembling a huge turtle was seen coming into 
Hampton Roads out of the mouth of Elizabeth River, 
and it quickly became certain that this was the much 
talked of rebel ironclad Merrimac, or, as the Confeder- 
ates had renamed her, the Virginia. She steamed 



280 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rapidly toward Newport News, three miles to the south- 
west, where the Union ships Congress and Cumber- 
land lay at anchor. These saw the uncouth monster 
coming and prepared for action. The Minnesota, the 
St. Lawrence, and the Roanoke, lying at Fortress Mon- 
roe also saw her and gave chase, but, the water being 
low, they all soon grounded. The broadsides of the 
Congress, as the Merrimac passed her at three hundred 
yards' distance, seemed to produce absolutely no effect 
upon her sloping iron roof. Neither did the broadsides 
of her intended prey, nor the fire of the shore batteries, 
for even an instant arrest her speed as, rushing on, she 
struck the Cumberland, and with her iron prow broke 
a hole as large as a hogshead in her side. Then backing 
away and hovering over her victim at convenient dis- 
tance, she raked her decks with shot and shell until, 
after three quarters of an hour's combat, the Cumber- 
land and her heroic defenders, who had maintained the 
fight with unyielding stubbornness, went to the bottom 
in fifty feet of water with colors flying. 

Having sunk the Cumberland, the Merrimac next 
turned her attention to the Congress, which had mean- 
while run into shoal water and grounded where the 
rebel vessel could not follow. But the Merrimac, be- 
ing herself apparently proof against shot and shell by 
her iron plating, took up a raking position two cables' 
length away, and during an hour's firing deliberately 
reduced the Congress to helplessness and to surrender 
— her commander being killed and the vessel set on 
fire. The approach, the manceuvering, and the two 
successive combats consumed the afternoon, and tow- 
ard nightfall the Merrimac and her three small con- 
sorts that had taken little part in the action withdrew 
to the rebel batteries on the Virginia shore : not alone 
because of the approaching darkness and the fatigue of 



MERRIMAC AND MONITOR 281 

the crew, but because the rebel ship had really suffered 
considerable damage in ramming the Cumberland, as 
well as from one or two chance shots that entered her 
port-holes. 

That same night, while the burning Congress yet 
lighted up the waters of Hampton Roads, a little ship, 
as strange-looking and as new to marine warfare as the 
rebel turtleback herself, arrived by sea in tow from 
New York, and receiving orders to proceed at once 
to the scene of conflict, stationed herself near the 
grounded Minnesota. This was Ericsson's "cheese- 
box on a raft," named by him the Monitor. The Union 
officers who had witnessed the day's events with dis- 
may, and were filled with gloomy forebodings for the 
morrow, while welcoming this providential reinforce- 
ment, were by no means reassured. The Monitor was 
only half the size of her antagonist, and had only two 
guns to the other's ten. But this very disparity proved 
an essential advantage. With only ten feet draft to the 
Mcrriinac's twenty-two, she not only possessed supe- 
rior mobility, but might run where the Merrimac could 
not follow. When, therefore, at eight o'clock on Sun- 
day, March 9, the Merrimac again came into Hamp- 
ton Roads to complete her victory, Lieutenant John L. 
Worden, commanding the Monitor, steamed boldly 
out to meet her. 

Then ensued a three hours' naval conflict which held 
the breathless attention of the active participants and 
the spectators on ship and shore, and for many weeks 
excited the wonderment of the reading world. If the 
Monitor's solid eleven-inch balls bounded without ap- 
parent effect from the sloping roof of the Merrimac, 
so, in turn, the Merrimac' s broadsides passed harm- 
lessly over the low deck of the Monitor, or rebounded 
from the round sides of her iron turret. When the 



282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward 
movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried 
the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, 
easily glided out of the line of direct impact. 

Each ship passed through occasional moments of 
danger, but the long three hours' encounter ended 
without other serious damage than an injury to Lieu- 
tenant Worden by the explosion of a rebel shell against 
a crevice of the Monitor's pilot-house through which 
he was looking, which, temporarily blinding his eye- 
sight, disabled him from command. At that point the 
battle ended by mutual consent. The Monitor, un- 
harmed except by a few unimportant dents in her 
plating, ran into shoal water to permit surgical atten- 
dance to her wounded officer. On her part, the Mer- 
rimac, abandoning any further molestation of the other 
ships, steamed away at noon to her retreat in Elizabeth 
River. The forty-one rounds fired from the Monitor's 
guns had so far weakened the Merrimac's armor that, 
added to the injuries of the previous day, it was of the 
highest prudence to avoid further conflict. A tragic 
fate soon ended the careers of both vessels. Owing to 
other military events, the Merrimac was abandoned, 
burned, and blown up by her officers about two months 
later; and in the following December, the Monitor 
foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras. But the types 
of these pioneer ironclads, which had demonstrated 
such unprecedented fighting qualities, were continued. 
Before the end of the war the Union navy had more 
than twenty monitors in service; and the structure of 
the Merrimac was in a number of instances repeated 
by the Confederates. 

The most brilliant of all the exploits of the navy dur- 
ing the year 1862 were those carried on under the 
command of Flag-Officer David G. Farragut, who, 



FLAG-OFFICER FARRAGUT 283 

though a born Southerner and residing in Virginia 
when the rebellion broke out, remained loyal to the 
government and true to the flag he had served for 
forty-eight years. Various preparations had been 
made and various plans discussed for an effective 
attempt against some prominent point on the Gulf 
coast. Very naturally, all examinations of the subject 
inevitably pointed to the opening of the Mississippi as 
the dominant problem to be solved ; and on January 9, 
Farragut was appointed to the command of the western 
Gulf blockading squadron, and eleven days thereafter 
received his confidential instructions to attempt the 
capture of the city of New Orleans. 

Thus far in the war, Farragut had been assigned 
to no prominent service, but the patience with which 
he had awaited his opportunity was now more than com- 
pensated by the energy and thoroughness with which 
he superintended the organization of his fleet. By the 
middle of April he was in the lower Mississippi with 
seventeen men-of-war and one hundred and seventy- 
seven guns. With him were Commander David D. 
Porter, in charge of a mortar flotilla of nineteen 
schooners and six armed steamships, and General Ben- 
jamin F. Butler, at the head of an army contingent of 
six thousand men, soon to be followed by considerable 
reinforcements. 

The first obstacle to be overcome was the fire from 
the twin forts Jackson and St. Philip, situated nearly 
opposite each other at a bend of the Mississippi twenty- 
five miles above the mouth of the river, while the city 
of New Orleans itself lies seventy-five miles farther 
up the stream. These were formidable forts of ma- 
sonry, with an armament together of over a hundred 
guns, and garrisons of about six hundred men each. 
They also had auxiliary defenses : first, of a strong river 



284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

barrier of log rafts and other obstructions connected by 
powerful chains, half a mile below the forts; second, 
of an improvised fleet of sixteen rebel gunboats and a 
formidable floating battery. None of Farragut's ships 
were ironclad. He had, from the beginning of the 
undertaking, maintained the theory that a wooden 
fleet, properly handled, could successfully pass the bat- 
teries of the forts. "I would as soon have a paper ship 
as an ironclad ; only give me men to fight her !" he said. 
He might not come back; but New Orleans would be 
won. In his hazardous undertaking his faith was based 
largely on the skill and courage of his subordinate com- 
manders of ships, and this faith was fully sustained 
by their gallantry and devotion. 

Porter's flotilla of nineteen schooners carrying two 
mortars each, anchored below the forts, maintained a 
heavy bombardment for five days, and then Farragut 
decided to try his ships. On the night of the twentieth 
the daring work of two gunboats cut an opening 
through the river barrier through which the vessels 
might pass; and at two o'clock on the morning of 
April 24, Farragut gave the signal to advance. The 
first division of his fleet, eight vessels, led by Captain 
Bailey, successfully passed the barrier. The second 
division of nine ships was not quite so fortunate. Three 
of them failed to pass the barrier, but the others, led by 
Farragut himself in his flag-ship, the Hartford, fol- 
lowed the advance. 

The starlit night was quickly obscured by the smoke 
of the general cannonade from both ships and forts; 
but the heavy batteries of the latter had little effect on 
the passing fleet. Farragut's flag-ship was. for a short 
while in great danger. At a moment when she slightly 
grounded a huge fire-raft, fully ablaze, was pushed 
against her by a rebel tug, and the flames caught in the 



NEW ORLEANS CAPTURED 285 

paint on her side, and mounted into her rigging. But 
this danger had also been provided against, and by 
heroic efforts the Hartford freed herself from her peril. 
Immediately above the forts, the fleet of rebel gunboats 
joined in the battle, which now resolved itself into a 
series of conflicts between single vessels or small 
groups. But the stronger and better-armed Union 
ships quickly destroyed the Confederate flotilla, with 
the single exception that two of the enemy's gunboats 
rammed the Varuna from opposite sides and sank her. 
Aside from this, the Union fleet sustained much mis- 
cellaneous damage, but no serious injury in the furious 
battle of an hour and a half. 

With but a short halt at Quarantine, six miles above 
the forts, Farragut and his thirteen ships of war 
pushed on rapidly over the seventy-five miles, and on 
the forenoon of April 25 New Orleans lay helpless 
under the guns of the Union fleet. The city was 
promptly evacuated by the Confederate General Lovell. 
Meanwhile, General Butler was busy moving his trans- 
ports and troops around outside by sea to Quarantine ; 
and, having occupied that point in force, Forts Jackson 
and St. Philip capitulated on April 28. This last ob- 
struction removed. Butler, after having garrisoned the 
forts, brought the bulk of his army up to New Orleans. 
and on May 1 Farragut turned over to him the formal 
possession of the city, where Butler continued in com- 
mand of the Department of the Gulf until the following 
December. 

Farragut immediately despatched an advance section 
of his fleet up the Mississippi. None of the important 
cities on its banks below Vicksburg had yet been forti- 
fied, and, without serious opposition, they surrendered 
as the Union ships successively reached them. Farra- 
gut himself, following with the remainder of his fleet, 



286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

arrived at Vicksburg on May 20. This city, by reason 
of the high bluffs on which it stands, was the most 
defensible point on the whole length of the great river 
within the Southern States; but so confidently had the 
Confederates trusted to the strength of their works 
at Columbus, Island No. 10, Fort Pillow, and other 
points, that the fortifications of Vicksburg had thus 
far received comparatively little attention. The recent 
Union victories, however, both to the north and south, 
had awakened them to their danger; and when Lovell 
evacuated New Orleans, he shipped heavy guns and 
sent five Confederate regiments to Vicksburg ; and dur- 
ing the eight days between their arrival on May 12 and 
the twentieth, on which day Farragut reached the city, 
six rebel batteries were put in readiness to fire on his 
ships. 

General Halleck, while pushing his siege works tow- 
ard Corinth, was notified as early as April 27 that 
Farragut was coming, and the logic of the situation 
ought to have induced him to send a cooperating force 
to Farragut's assistance, or, at the very least, to have 
matured plans for such cooperation. All the events 
would have favored an expedition of this kind. When 
Corinth, at the end of May, fell into Halleck's hands, 
Forts Pillow and Randolph on the Mississippi River 
were hastily evacuated by the enemy, and on June 6 
the Union flotilla of river gunboats which had ren- 
dered such signal service at Henry, Donelson, and 
Island No. 10, reinforced by a hastily constructed 
flotilla of heavy river tugs converted into rams, gained 
another brilliant victory in a most dramatic naval bat- 
tle at Memphis, during which an opposing Confederate 
flotilla of similar rams and gunboats was almost com- 
pletely destroyed, and the immediate evacuation of 
Memphis by the Confederates thereby forced. 



FARRAGUT AT VICKSBURG 287 

This left Vicksburg as the single barrier to the com- 
plete opening of the Mississippi, and that barrier was 
defended by only six batteries and a garrison of six 
Confederate regiments at the date of Farragut's arrival 
before it. But Farragut had with his expedition only 
two regiments of troops, and the rebel batteries were 
situated at such an elevation that the guns of the Union 
fleet could not be raised sufficiently to silence them. 
Neither help nor promise of help came from Halleck's 
army, and Farragut could therefore do nothing but turn 
his vessels down stream and return to New Orleans. 
There, about June 1, he received news from the Navy 
Department that the administration was exceedingly 
anxious to have the Mississippi opened; and this time, 
taking with him Porter's mortar flotilla and three thou- 
sand troops, he again proceeded up the river, and a 
second time reached Vicksburg on June 25. 

The delay, however, had enabled the Confederates 
greatly to strengthen the fortifications and the garrison 
of the city. Neither a bombardment from Porter's 
mortar sloops, nor the running of Farragut's ships past 
the batteries, where they were joined by the Union gun- 
boat flotilla from above, sufficed to bring the Confeder- 
ates to a surrender. Farragut estimated that a cooper- 
ating land force of twelve to fifteen thousand would 
have enabled him to take the works; and Ilalleck, on 
June 28 and July 3, partially promised early assistance. 
But on July 14 he reported definitely that it would be 
impossible for him to render the expected aid. Under 
these circumstances, the Navy Department ordered Far- 
ragut back to New Orleans, lest his ships of deep draft 
should be detained in the river by the rapidly falling 
water. The capture of Vicksburg was postponed for a 
whole year, and the early transfer of Halleck to Wash- 
ington changed the current of Western campaigns. 



XXI 

McClellan's Illness — Lincoln Consults McDowell and 
Franklin — President's Plan against Manassas — McClel- 
lan's Plan against Richmond — Cameron and Stanton 
— President's War Order No. i — Lincoln's Questions 
to McClellan — News from the West — Death of Willie 
Lincoln — The Harper's Ferry Fiasco — President's War 
Order No. 3 — The News from Hampton Roads — Ma- 
nassas Evacuated — Movement to the Peninsula — York- 
town — The Peninsula Campaign — Seven Days' Battles 
— Retreat to Harrison's Landing 

"VPTE have seen how the express orders of Presi- 
W dent Lincoln in the early days of January, 1862, 
stirred the Western commanders to the beginning of 
active movements that brought about an important 
series of victories during the first half of the year. The 
results of his determination to break a similar military 
stagnation in the East need now to be related. 

The gloomy outlook at the beginning of the year 
has already been mentioned. Finding on January 10 
that General McClellan was still ill and unable to see 
him, he called Generals McDowell and Franklin into 
conference with himself, Seward, Chase, and the As- 
sistant Secretary of War; and, explaining to them his 
dissatisfaction and distress at existing conditions, said 
to them that "if something were not soon done, the 
bottom would be out of the whole affair ; and if General 
McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like 
288 



CAMERON AND STANTON 289 

to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be 
made to do something." 

The two generals, differing on some other points, 
agreed, however, in a memorandum prepared next 
day at the President's request, that a direct movement 
against the Confederate army at Manassas was pref- 
erable to a movement by water against Richmond ; that 
preparations for the former could be made in a week, 
while the latter would require a month or six weeks. 
Similar discussions were held on the eleventh and 
twelfth, and finally, on January 13, by which date Gen- 
eral McClellan had sufficiently recovered to be present. 
McClellan took no pains to hide his displeasure at the 
proceedings, and ventured no explanation when the 
President asked what and when anything could be 
done. Chase repeated the direct interrogatory to Mc- 
Clellan himself, inquiring what he intended doing with 
his army, and when he intended doing it. McClellan 
stated his unwillingness to develop his plans, but said 
he would tell them if he was ordered to do so. The 
President then asked him if he had in his own mind 
any particular time fixed when a movement could be 
commenced. McClellan replied that he had. "Then," 
rejoined the President, "I will adjourn this meeting." 

While these conferences were going on, a change 
occurred in the President's cabinet ; Secretary of War 
Cameron, who had repeatedly expressed a desire to be 
relieved from the onerous duties of the War Depart- 
ment, was made minister to Russia and Edwin M. 
Stanton appointed to succeed him. Stanton had been 
Attorney-General during the last months of President 
Buchanan's administration, and, though a lifelong 
Democrat, had freely conferred and cooperated with 
Republican leaders in the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives in thwarting secession schemes. He was 

19 



290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a lawyer of ability and experience, and, possessing or- 
ganizing qualities of a high degree combined with 
a strong will and great physical endurance, gave his 
administration of the War Department a record for 
efficiency which it will be difficult for any future min- 
ister to equal ; and for which service his few mistakes 
and subordinate faults of character will be readily for- 
gotten. In his new functions, Stanton enthusias- 
tically seconded the President's efforts to rouse the 
Army of the Potomac to speedy and vigorous action. 

In his famous report, McClellan states that very 
soon after Stanton became Secretary of War he ex- 
plained verbally to the latter his plan of a campaign 
against Richmond by way of the lower Chesapeake 
Bay, and at Stanton's direction also explained it to 
the President. It is not strange that neither the Presi- 
dent nor the new Secretary approved it. The reasons 
which then existed against it in theory, and were after- 
ward demonstrated in practice, are altogether too evi- 
dent. As this first plan was never reduced to writing, 
it may be fairly inferred that it was one of those mere 
suggestions which, like all that had gone before, would 
serve only to postpone action. 

The patience of the President was at length so far 
exhausted that on January 27 he wrote his General 
War Order No. 1, which directed "that the 22d day of 
February, 1862, be the day for a general movement of 
all the land and naval forces of the United States 
against the insurgent forces," and that the Secretaries 
of War and of the Navy, the general-in-chief, and all 
other commanders and subordinates of land and naval 
forces "will severally be held to their strict and full 
responsibilities for prompt execution of this order." 
To leave no doubt of his intention that the Army of 
the Potomac should make a beginning, the President, 



LINCOLN'S QUESTIONS 291 

four days later, issued his Special War Order No. 1, 
directing that after providing safely for the defense of 
Washington, it should move against the Confederate 
army at Manassas Junction, on or before the date 
announced. 

As McClellan had been allowed to have his way 
almost without question for six months past, it was, 
perhaps, as much through mere habit of opposition 
as from any intelligent decision in his own mind 
that he again requested permission to present his ob- 
jections to the President's plan. Mr. Lincoln, there- 
upon, to bring the discussion to a practical point, wrote 
him the following list of queries on February 3 : 

"My Dear Sir: You and I have distinct and dif- 
ferent plans for a movement of the Army of the Poto- 
mac — yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rap- 
pahannock, to Urbana, and across land to the terminus 
of the railroad on the York River; mine, to move 
directly to a point on the railroad southwest of Ma- 
nassas. 

"If you will give me satisfactory answers to the 
following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to 
yours. 

"First. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger 
expenditure of time and money than mine? 

"Second. Wherein is a victory more certain by your 
plan than mine? 

"Third. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your 
plan than mine? 

"Fourth. In fact, would it not be less valuable in 
this, that it would break no great line of the enemy's 
communications, while mine would? 

"Fifth. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be 
more difficult by your plan than mine?" 

Instead of specifically answering the President's con- 



292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cise interrogatories, McClellan, on the following day, 
presented to the Secretary of War a long letter, recit- 
ing in much detail his statement of what he had done 
since coming to Washington, and giving a rambling 
outline of what he thought might be accomplished in 
the future prosecution of the war. His reasoning 
in favor of an advance by Chesapeake Bay upon Rich- 
mond, instead of against Manassas Junction, rests 
principally upon the assumption that at Manassas the 
enemy is prepared to resist, while at Richmond there 
are no preparations ; that to win Manassas would give 
us only the field of battle and the moral effect of a vic- 
tory, while to win Richmond would give us the rebel 
capital with its communications and supplies; that at 
Manassas we would fight on a field chosen by the en- 
emy, while at Richmond we would fight on one chosen 
by ourselves. If as a preliminary hypothesis these com- 
parisons looked plausible, succeeding events quickly 
exposed their fallacy. 

The President, in his anxious studies and exhaustive 
discussion with military experts in the recent confer- 
ences, fully comprehended that under McClellan's 
labored strategical theories lay a fundamental error. 
It was not the capture of a place, but the destruc- 
tion of the rebel armies that was needed to subdue the 
rebellion. But Mr. Lincoln also saw the fearful re- 
sponsibility he would be taking upon himself if he 
forced McClellan to fight against his own judgment 
and protest, even though that judgment was incorrect. 
The whole subject, therefore, underwent a new and 
yet more elaborate investigation. The delay which this 
rendered necessary was soon greatly lengthened by two 
other causes. It was about this time that the tele- 
graph brought news from the West of the surrender 
of Fort Henry, February 6, the investment of Fort 



DEATH OF WILLIE LINCOLN 293 

Donelson on the thirteenth, and its surrender on the 
sixteenth, incidents which absorbed the constant atten- 
tion of the President and the Secretary of War. Al- 
most simultaneously, a heavy domestic sorrow fell upon 
Mr. Lincoln in the serious illness of his son Willie, an 
interesting and most promising lad of twelve, and his 
death in the White House on February 20. 

When February 22 came, while there was plainly no 
full compliance with the President's War Order No. 
1, there was, nevertheless, such promise of a beginning, 
even at Washington, as justified reasonable expecta- 
tion. The authorities looked almost hourly for the 
announcement of two preliminary movements which 
had been preparing for many days : one, to attack rebel 
batteries on the Virginia shore of the Potomac; the 
other to throw bridges — one of pontoons, the second a 
permanent bridge of canal-boats — across the river at 
Harper's Ferry, and an advance by Banks's division on 
Winchester to protect the opening of the Baltimore 
and Ohio railroad and reestablish transportation to and 
from the West over that important route. 

On the evening of February iy, Secretary Stanton 
came to the President, and, after locking the door to 
prevent interruption, opened and read two despatches 
from McClellan, who had gone personally to superin- 
tend the crossing. The first despatch from the general 
described the fine spirits of the troops, and the splendid 
throwing of the pontoon bridge by Captain Duane and 
his three lieutenants, for whom he at once recom- 
mended brevets, and the immediate crossing of eighty- 
five hundred infantry. This despatch was dated at 
ten o'clock the previous night. "The next is not so 
good," remarked the Secretary of War. It stated 
that the lift lock was too small to permit the canal- 
boats to enter the river, so that it was impossible to 



294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

construct the permanent bridge. He would therefore 
be obliged to fall back upon the safe and slow plan of 
merely covering the reconstruction of the railroad, 
which would be tedious and make it impossible to seize 
Winchester. 

"What does this mean?" asked the President, in 
amazement. 

"It means," said the Secretary of War, "that it is 
a damned fizzle. It means that he does n't intend to 
do anything." 

The President's indignation was intense; and when, 
a little later, General Marcy, McQellan's father-in- 
law and chief of staff, came in, Lincoln's criticism of 
the affair was in sharper language than was his usual 
habit. 

"Why, in the name of common sense," said he, ex- 
citedly, "could n't the general have known whether 
canal-boats would go through that lock before he spent 
a million dollars getting them there? I am almost de- 
spairing at these results. Everything seems to fail. 
The impression is daily gaining ground that the gen- 
eral does not intend to do anything. By a failure like 
this we lose all the prestige gained by the capture of 
Fort Donelson." 

The prediction of the Secretary of War proved cor- 
rect. That same night, McClellan revoked Hooker's 
authority to cross the lower Potomac and demolish 
the rebel batteries about the Occoquan River. It was 
doubtless this Harper's Ferry incident which finally 
convinced the President that he could no longer leave 
McClellan intrusted with the sole and unrestricted 
exercise of military affairs. Yet that general had 
shown such decided ability in certain lines of his pro- 
fession, and had plainly in so large a degree won the 
confidence of the Army of the Potomac itself, that he 



PRESIDENT'S WAR ORDER NO. 3 295 

did not wish entirely to lose the benefit of his services. 
He still hoped that, once actively started in the field, he 
might yet develop valuable qualities of leadership. 
He had substantially decided to let him have his own 
way in his proposed campaign against Richmond by 
water, and orders to assemble the necessary vessels 
had been given before the Harper's Ferry failure was 
known. 

Early on the morning of March 8, the President 
made one more effort to convert McClellan to a direct 
movement against Manassas, but without success. On 
the contrary, the general convened twelve of his divi- 
sion commanders in a council, who voted eight to four 
for the water route. This finally decided the question 
in the President's mind, but he carefully qualified the 
decision by two additional war orders of his own, 
written without consultation. President's General 
War Order No. 2 directed that the Army of the Po- 
tomac should be immediately organized into four army 
corps, to be respectively commanded by McDowell, 
Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes, and a fifth under 
Banks. It is noteworthy that the first three of these 
had always earnestly advocated the Manassas move- 
ment. President's General War Order No. 3 directed, 
in substance : First. An immediate effort to capture 
the Potomac batteries. Second. That until that was 
accomplished not more than two army corps should be 
started on the Chesapeake campaign toward Rich- 
mond. Third. That any Chesapeake movement should 
begin in ten days ; and — Fourth. That no such move- 
ment should be ordered without leaving Washington 
entirely secure. 

Even while the President was completing the draft- 
ing and copying of these important orders, events were 
transpiring which once more put a new face upon the 



296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

proposed campaign against Richmond. During the 
forenoon of the next day, March 9, a despatch was 
received from Fortress Monroe, reporting the appear- 
ance of the rebel ironclad Merrimac, and the havoc she 
had wrought the previous afternoon — the Cumber- 
land sunk, the Congress surrendered and burned, the 
Minnesota aground and about to be attacked. There 
was a quick gathering of officials at the Executive 
Mansion — Secretaries Stanton, Seward, Welles, Gen- 
erals McClellan, Meigs, Totten, Commodore Smith, 
and Captain Dahlgren — and a scene of excitement en- 
sued, unequaled by any other in the President's office 
during the war. Stanton walked up and down like a 
caged lion, and eager discussion animated cabinet and 
military officers. Two other despatches soon came, 
one from the captain of a vessel at Baltimore, who had 
left Fortress Monroe on the evening of the eighth, and 
a copy of a telegram to the "New York Tribune," giv- 
ing more details. 

President Lincoln was the coolest man in the whole 
gathering, carefully analyzing the language of the 
telegrams, to give their somewhat confused statements 
intelligible coherence. Wild suggestions flew from 
speaker to speaker about possible danger to be appre- 
hended from the new marine terror — whether she 
might not be able to go to New York or Philadelphia 
and levy tribute, to Baltimore or Annapolis to de- 
stroy the transports gathered for McClellan's move- 
ment, or even to come up the Potomac and burn Wash- 
ington; and all sorts of prudential measures and 
safeguards were proposed. 

In the afternoon, however, apprehension was greatly 
quieted. That very day a cable was laid across the 
bay, giving direct telegraphic communication with 
Fortress Monroe, and Captain Fox, who happened to 



NEWS FROM HAMPTON ROADS 297 

be on the spot, concisely reported at about 4 p.m. the 
dramatic sequel — the timely arrival of the Monitor, the 
interesting naval battle between the two ironclads, and 
that at noon the Merrimac had withdrawn from the 
conflict, and with her three small consorts steamed back 
into Elizabeth River. 

Scarcely had the excitement over the Monitor and 
Merrimac news begun to subside, when, on the same 
afternoon, a new surprise burst upon the military au- 
thorities in a report that the whole Confederate 
army had evacuated its stronghold at Manassas and the 
batteries on the Potomac, and had retired southward 
to a new line behind the Rappahannock. General Mc- 
Clellan hastened across the river, and, finding the news 
to be correct, issued orders during the night for a 
general movement of the army next morning to the 
vacated rebel camps. The march was promptly accom- 
plished, notwithstanding the bad roads, and the troops 
had the meager satisfaction of hoisting the Union flag 
over the deserted rebel earthworks. 

For two weeks the enemy had been preparing for 
this retreat; and, beginning their evacuation on the 
seventh, their whole retrograde movement was com- 
pleted by March 11, by which date they were secure 
in their new line of defense, "prepared for such an 
emergency — the south bank of the Rappahannock 
strengthened by field-works, and provided with a depot 
of food," writes General Johnston. No further com- 
ment is needed to show McClellan's utter incapacity or 
neglect, than that for full two months he had com- 
manded an army of one hundred and ninety thousand, 
present for duty, within two days' march of the forty- 
seven thousand Confederates, present for duty, whom 
he thus permitted to march away to their new strong- 
holds without a gun fired or even a meditated attack. 



298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

General McClellan had not only lost the chance of 
an easy and brilliant victory near Washington, but 
also the possibility of his favorite plan to move by water 
to Urbana on the lower Rappahannock, and from 
there by a land march via West Point toward Rich- 
mond. On that route the enemy was now in his way. 
He therefore, on March 13, hastily called a council of 
his corps commanders, who decided that under the new 
conditions it would be best to proceed by water to 
Fortress Monroe, and from there move up the Penin- 
sula toward Richmond. To this new plan, adopted in 
the stress of excitement and haste, the President an- 
swered through the Secretary of War on the same day : 

"First. Leave such force at Manassas Junction as 
shall make it entirely certain that the enemy shall not 
repossess himself of that position and line of com- 
munication. 

"Second. Leave Washington entirely secure. 

"Third. Move the remainder of the force down the 
Potomac, choosing a new base at Fort Monroe, or any- 
where between here and there ; or, at all events, move 
such remainder of the army at once in pursuit of the 
enemy by some route." 

Two days before, the President had also announced 
a step which he had doubtless had in contemplation for 
many days, if not many weeks, namely, that — 

"Major-General McClellan having personally taken 
the field at the head of the Army of the Potomac, until 
otherwise ordered, he is relieved from the command 
of the other military departments, he retaining com- 
mand of the Department of the Potomac." 

This order of March 11 included also the already 
mentioned consolidation of the western departments 
under Halleck; and out of the region lying between 
Halleck's command and McClellan's command it ere- 



LINCOLN TO McCLELLAN 299 

ated the Mountain Department, the command of which 
he gave to General Fremont, whose reinstatement had 
been loudly clamored for by many prominent and en- 
thusiastic followers. 

As the preparations for a movement by water had 
been in progress since February 27, there was little 
delay in starting the Army of the Potomac on its new 
campaign. The troops began their embarkation on 
March 17, and by April 5 over one hundred thousand 
men, with all their material of war, had been trans- 
ported to Fortress Monroe, where General McClellan 
himself arrived on the second of the month, and issued 
orders to begin his march on the fourth. 

Unfortunately, right at the outset of this new cam- 
paign, General McClellan's incapacity and want of 
candor once more became sharply evident. In the plan 
formulated by the four corps commanders, and ap- 
proved by himself, as well as emphatically repeated by 
the President's instructions, was the essential require- 
ment that Washington should be left entirely secure. 
Learning that the general had neglected this positive 
injunction, the President ordered McDowell's corps 
to remain for the protection of the capital ; and when 
the general complained of this, Mr. Lincoln wrote him 
on April 9 : 

"After you left I ascertained that less than twenty 
thousand unorganized men, without a single field-bat- 
tery, were all you designed to be left for the defense of 
Washington and Manassas Junction; and part of this, 
even, was to go to General Hooker's old position. 
General Banks's corps, once designed for Manassas 
Junction, was divided and tied up on the line of Win- 
chester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without 
again exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore 
and Ohio railroad. This presented (or would present 



300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a great 
temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rap- 
pahannock and sack Washington. My explicit order 
that Washington should, by the judgment of all the 
commanders of corps, be left entirely secure, had been 
neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to de- 
tain McDowell. 

"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your ar- 
rangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction; but 
when that arrangement was broken up and nothing 
was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I 
was constrained to substitute something for it myself. 

"And now allow me to ask, do you really think I 
should permit the line from Richmond via Manassas 
Junction to this city to be entirely open, except what 
resistance could be presented by less than twenty thou- 
sand unorganized troops? This is a question which 
the country will not allow me to evade. . . . 

"By delay, the enemy will relatively gain upon you — 
that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and rein- 
forcements than you can by reinforcements alone. And 
once more let me tell you it is indispensable to you that 
you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You 
will do me the justice to remember I always insisted 
that going down the bay in search of a field, instead 
of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting and 
not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the 
same enemy and the same or equal intrenchments at 
either place. The country will not fail to note — is 
noting now — that the present hesitation to move upon 
an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas re- 
peated." 

General McClellan's expectations in coming to the 
Peninsula, first, that he would find few or no rebel 
intrenchments, and, second, that he would be able to 



YORKTOWN 301 " 

make rapid movements, at once signally failed. On 
the afternoon of the second day's march he came to the 
first line of the enemy's defenses, heavy fortifications 
at Yorktown on the York River, and a strong line of 
intrenchments and dams flooding the Warwick River, 
extending to an impassable inlet from James River. 
But the situation was not yet desperate. Magruder, 
the Confederate commander, had only eleven thou- 
sand men to defend Yorktown and the thirteen-mile 
line of the Warwick. McClellan, on the contrary, 
had fifty thousand at hand, and as many more within 
call, with which to break the Confederate line and con- 
tinue his proposed "rapid movements." But now, 
without any adequate reconnaissance or other vigor- 
ous effort, he at once gave up his thoughts of rapid 
movement, one of the main advantages he had always 
claimed for the water route, and adopted the slow 
expedient of a siege of Yorktown. Not alone was his 
original plan of campaign demonstrated to be faulty, 
but by this change in the method of its execution it 
became fatal. 

It would be weary and exasperating to recount in 
detail the remaining principal episodes of McClellan's 
operations to gain possession of the Confederate cap- 
ital. The whole campaign is a record of hesitation, 
delay, and mistakes in the chief command, brilliantly 
relieved by the heroic fighting and endurance of the 
troops and subordinate officers, gathering honor out 
of defeat, and shedding the luster of renown over a 
result of barren failure. McClellan wasted a month 
raising siege-works to bombard Yorktown, when he 
might have turned the place by two or three days' oper- 
ations with his superior numbers of four to one. By 
his failure to give instructions after Yorktown was 
evacuated, he allowed a single division of his advance- 



302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

guard to be beaten back at Williamsburg, when thirty- 
thousand of their comrades were within reach, but 
without orders. He wrote to the President that he 
would have to fight double numbers intrenched, when 
his own army was actually twice as strong as that of 
his antagonist. Placing his army astride the Chicka- 
hominy, he afforded that antagonist, General John- 
ston, the opportunity, at a sudden rise of the river, to 
fall on one portion of his divided forces at Fair Oaks 
with overwhelming numbers. Finally, when he was 
within four miles of Richmond and was attacked by 
General Lee, he began a retreat to the James River, 
and after his corps commanders held the attacking en- 
emy at bay by a successful battle on each of six suc- 
cessive days, he day after day gave up each field won 
or held by the valor and blood of his heroic soldiers. 
On July i, the collected Union army made a stand at 
the battle of Malvern Hill, inflicting a defeat on the 
enemy which practically shattered the Confederate 
army, and in the course of a week caused it to retire 
within the fortifications of Richmond. During all this 
magnificent fighting, however, McClellan was op- 
pressed by the apprehension of impending defeat; and 
even after the brilliant victory of Malvern Hill, con- 
tinued his retreat to Harrison's Landing, where the 
Union gunboats on the James River assured him of 
safety and supplies. 

It must be borne in mind that this Peninsula cam- 
paign, from the landing at Fortress Monroe to the bat- 
tle at Malvern Hill, occupied three full months, and 
that during the first half of that period the government, 
yielding to McClellan's constant faultfinding and 
clamor for reinforcements, sent him forty thousand 
additional men ; also that in the opinion of competent 
critics, both Union and Confederate, he had, after the 



McCLELLAN TO STANTON 303 

battle of Fair Oaks, and twice during the seven days' 
battles, a brilliant opportunity to take advantage of 
Confederate mistakes, and by a vigorous offensive to 
capture Richmond. But constitutional indecision un- 
fitted him to seize the fleeting chances of war. His 
hope of victory was always overawed by his fear of 
defeat. While he commanded during a large part of 
the campaign double, and always superior, numbers 
to the enemy, his imagination led him continually to 
double their strength in his reports. This delusion 
so wrought upon him that on the night of June 27 he 
sent the Secretary of War an almost despairing and 
insubordinate despatch, containing these inexcusable 
phrases : 

"Had I twenty thousand or even ten thousand fresh 
troops to use to-morrow, I could take Richmond; but 
I have not a man in reserve, and shall be glad to cover 
my retreat and save the material and personnel of the 
army. . . . If I save this army now, I tell you 
plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other 
persons in Washington. You have done your best to 
sacrifice this army." 

Under almost any other ruler such language would 
have been quickly followed by trial and dismissal, if 
not by much severer punishment. But while Mr. Lin- 
coln was shocked by McClellan's disrespect, he was yet 
more startled by the implied portent of the despatch. 
It indicated a loss of confidence and a perturbation of 
mind which rendered possible even a surrender of 
the whole army. The President, therefore, with his 
habitual freedom from passion, merely sent an un- 
moved and kind reply : 

"Save your army at all events. Will send rein- 
forcements as fast as we can. Of course they cannot 
reach you to-day, to-morrow, or next day. I have not 



304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

said you were ungenerous for saying you needed rein- 
forcements. I thought you were ungenerous in as- 
suming that I did not send them as fast as I could. I 
feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as 
keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a drawn 
battle or a repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy 
not being in Washington." 



XXII 

Jackson's Valley Campaign — Lincoln's Visit to Scott — 
Pope Assigned to Command — Lee's Attack on McClel- 
lan — Retreat to Harrison's Landing — Seward Sent to 
New York — Lincoln's Letter to Seward — Lincoln's 
Letter to McClellan — Lincoln's Visit to McClellan — 
Ilalleck made General-in-Chief — Halleck's Visit to Mc- 
Clellan — Withdrawal from Harrison's Landing — Pope 
Assumes Command — Second Battle of Bull Run — The 
Cabinet Protest — McClellan Ordered to Defend Wash- 
ington — The Maryland Campaign — Battle of Antietam 
— Lincoln Visits Antietam — Lincoln's Letter to Mc- 
Clellan — McClellan Removed from Command 

DURING the month of May, while General Mc- 
Clellan was slowly working his way across the 
Chickahominy by bridge-building and intrenching, 
there occurred the episode of Stonewall Jackson's val- 
ley campaign, in which that eccentric and daring Con- 
federate commander made a rapid and victorious 
march up the Shenandoah valley nearly to Harper's 
Ferry. Its principal effect upon the Richmond cam- 
paign was to turn back McDowell, who had been 
started on a land march to unite with the right wing 
of McClellan's army, under instructions, however, al- 
ways to be in readiness to interpose his force against 
any attempt of the enemy to march upon Washington. 
This campaign of Stonewall Jackson's has been much 
lauded by military writers; but its temporary success 
resulted from good luck rather than military ability. 
20 305 



3 o6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Rationally considered, it was an imprudent and even 
reckless adventure that courted and would have re- 
sulted in destruction or capture had the junction of 
forces under McDowell, Shields, and Fremont, or- 
dered by President Lincoln, not been thwarted by the 
mistake and delay of Fremont. It was an episode 
that signally demonstrated the wisdom of the President 
in having retained McDowell's corps for the protection 
of the national capital. 

That, however, was not the only precaution to which 
the President had devoted his serious attention. Dur- 
ing the whole of McClellan's Richmond campaign he 
had continually borne in mind the possibility of his de- 
feat, and the eventualities it might create. Little by 
little, that general's hesitation, constant complaints, and 
exaggerated reports of the enemy's strength changed 
the President's apprehensions from possibility to prob- 
ability; and he took prompt measures to be prepared 
as far as possible, should a new disaster arise. On 
June 24 he made a hurried visit to the veteran General 
Scott at West Point, for consultation on the existing 
military conditions, and on his return to Washington 
called General Pope from the West, and, by an order 
dated June 26, specially assigned him to the command 
of the combined forces under Fremont, Banks, and 
McDowell, to be called the Army of Virginia, whose 
duty it should be to guard the Shenandoah valley and 
Washington city, and, as far as might be, render aid to 
McClellan's campaign against Richmond. 

The very day on which the President made this order 
proved to be the crisis of McClellan's campaign. That 
was the day he had fixed upon for a general advance; 
but so far from realizing this hope, it turned out, also, 
to be the day on which General Lee began his attack 
on the Army of the Potomac, which formed the begin- 



LINCOLN TO SEWARD 307 

ning of the seven days' battles, and changed Mc- 
Clellan's intended advance against Richmond to a re- 
treat to the James River. It was after midnight of the 
next day that McClellan sent Stanton his despairing 
and insubordinate despatch indicating the possibility 
of losing his entire army. 

Upon the receipt of this alarming piece of news, 
President Lincoln instantly took additional measures 
of safety. He sent a telegram to General Burnside in 
North Carolina to come with all the reinforcements 
he could spare to McClellan's help. Through the Sec- 
retary of War he instructed General Halleck at Cor- 
inth to send twenty-five thousand infantry to McClellan 
by way of Baltimore and Washington. His most im- 
portant action was to begin the formation of a new 
army. On the same day he sent Secretary of State 
Seward to New York with a letter to be confidentially 
shown to such of the governors of States as could be 
hurriedly called together, setting forth his view of the 
present condition of the war, and his own determi- 
nation in regard to its prosecution. After outlining 
the reverse at Richmond and the new problems it cre- 
ated, the letter continued : 

"What should be done is to hold what we have in 
the West, open the Mississippi, and take Chattanooga 
and East Tennessee without more. A reasonable force 
should in every event be kept about Washington for 
its protection. Then let the country give us a hundred 
thousand new troops in the shortest possible time, 
which, added to McClellan directly or indirectly, will 
take Richmond without endangering any other place 
which we now hold, and will substantially end the 
war. I expect to maintain this contest until successful, 
or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or 
Congress or the country forsake me ; and I would pub- 



308 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

licly appeal to the country for this new force were it 
not that I fear a general panic and stampede would 
follow, so hard it is to have a thing understood as it 
really is." 

Meanwhile, by the news of the victory of Malvern 
Hill and the secure position to which McClellan had 
retired at Harrison's Landing, the President learned 
that the condition of the Army of the Potomac was 
not as desperate as at first had seemed. The result of 
Seward's visit to New York is shown in the President's 
letter of July 2, answering McClellan's urgent call for 
heavy reinforcements : 

"The idea of sending you fifty thousand, or any 
other considerable force, promptly, is simply absurd. 
If, in your frequent mention of responsibility, you have 
the impression that I blame you for not doing more 
than you can, please be relieved of such impression. 
I only beg that in like manner you will not ask impos- 
sibilities of me. If you think you are not strong 
enough to take Richmond just now, I do not ask you to 
try just now. Save the army, material and personnel, 
and I will strengthen it for the offensive again as fast 
as I can. The governors of eighteen States offer me a 
new levy of three hundred thousand, which I accept." 

And in another letter, two days later : 

"To reinforce you so as to enable you to resume the 
offensive within a month, or even six weeks, is impos- 
sible. . . . Under these circumstances, the defen- 
sive for the present must be your only care. Save the 
army — first, where you are, if you can; secondly, by 
removal, if you must." 

To satisfy himself more fully about the actual situ- 
ation, the President made a visit to Harrison's Landing 
on July 8 and 9, and held personal interviews with 
McClellan and his leading generals. While the ques- 



HALLECK GENERAL-IN-CHIEF 309 

tion of removing the army underwent considerable dis- 
cussion, the President left it undecided for the present; 
but on July 11, soon after his return to Washington, 
he issued an order : 

"That Major-General Henry W. Halleck be assigned 
to command the whole land forces of the United States, 
as general-in-chief, and that he repair to this capital 
so soon as he can with safety to the positions and oper- 
ations within the department now under his charge." 

Though General Halleck was loath to leave his com- 
mand in the West, he made the necessary dispositions 
there, and in obedience to the President's order reached 
Washington on July 23, and assumed command of all 
the armies as general-in-chief. On the day following 
he proceeded to General McClellan's headquarters at 
Harrison's Landing, and after two days' consultation 
reached the same conclusion at which the President 
had already arrived, that the Army of the Potomac 
must be withdrawn. McClellan strongly objected to 
this course. He wished to be reinforced so that he 
might resume his operations against Richmond. To 
do this he wanted fifty thousand more men, which 
number it was impossible to give him, as he had al- 
ready been pointedly informed by the President. On 
Halleck's return to Washington, it was, on further con- 
sultation, resolved to bring the Army of the Potomac 
back to Acquia Creek and unite it with the army of 
Pope. 

On July 30, McClellan received a preliminary order 
to send away his sick, and the withdrawal of his entire 
force was ordered by telegraph on August 3. With the 
obstinacy and persistence that characterized his course 
from first to last, McClellan still protested against the 
change, and when Halleck in a calm letter answered 
his objections with both the advantages and the neces- 



3io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sity of the order, McClellan's movement of withdrawal 
was so delayed that fully eleven days of inestimable 
time were unnecessarily lost, and the army of Pope 
was thereby put in serious peril. 

Meanwhile, under President Lincoln's order of 
June 26, General Pope had left the West, and about the 
first of July reached Washington, where for two weeks, 
in consultation with the President and the Secretary 
of War, he studied the military situation, and on July 
14 assumed command of the Army of Virginia, con- 
sisting of the corps of General Fremont, eleven thou- 
sand five hundred strong, and that of General Banks, 
eight thousand strong, in the Shenandoah valley, and 
the corps of General McDowell, eighteen thousand five 
hundred strong, with one division at Manassas and 
the other at Fredericksburg. It is unnecessary to relate 
in detail the campaign which followed. Pope intelli- 
gently and faithfully performed the task imposed on 
him to concentrate his forces and hold in check the 
advance of the enemy, which began as soon as the Con- 
federates learned of the evacuation of Harrison's 
Landing. 

When the Army of the Potomac was ordered to be 
withdrawn it was clearly enough seen that the move- 
ment might put the Army of Virginia in jeopardy; 
but it was hoped that if the transfer to Acquia Creek 
and Alexandria were made as promptly as the order 
contemplated, the two armies would be united before 
the enemy could reach them. McClellan, however, con- 
tinued day after day to protest against the change, and 
made his preparations and embarkation with such ex- 
asperating slowness as showed that he still hoped to 
induce the government to change its plans. 

Pope, despite the fact that he had managed his re- 
treat with skill and bravery, was attacked by Lee's 



THE CABINET PROTEST 311 

army, and fought the second battle of Bull Run on 
August 30, under the disadvantage of having one of 
McClellan's divisions entirely absent and the other 
failing to respond to his order to advance to the attack 
on the first day. McClellan had reached Alexandria 
on August 24; and notwithstanding telegram after 
telegram from Halleck, ordering him to push Frank- 
lin's division out to Pope's support, excuse and delay 
seemed to be his only response, ending at last in his 
direct suggestion that Franklin's division be kept to 
defend Washington, and Pope be left to "get out of his 
scrape" as best he might. 

McClellan's conduct and language had awakened 
the indignation of the whole cabinet, roused Stanton to 
fury, and greatly outraged the feelings of President 
Lincoln. But even under such irritation the President 
was, as ever, the very incarnation of cool, dispassion- 
ate judgment, allowing nothing but the daily and 
hourly logic of facts to influence his suggestions or 
decision. In these moments of crisis and danger he 
felt more keenly than ever the awful responsibilities 
of rulership, and that the fate of the nation hung upon 
his words and acts from hour to hour. 

His official counselors, equally patriotic and sincere, 
were not his equals in calmness of temper. On Friday, 
August 29, Stanton went to Chase, and after an ex- 
cited conference drew up a memorandum of protest, 
to be signed by the members of the cabinet, which 
drew a gloomy picture of present and apprehended dan- 
gers, and recommended the immediate removal of Mc- 
Clellan from command. Chase and Stanton signed 
the paper, as also did Bates, whom they immediately 
consulted, and somewhat later Smith added his signa- 
ture. But when they presented it to Welles, he firmly 
refused, stating that though he concurred with them 



312 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in judgment, it would be discourteous and unfriendly 
to the President to adopt such a course. They did not 
go to Seward and Blair, apparently believing them to 
be friendly to McClellan, and therefore probably un- 
willing to give their assent. The refusal of Mr. 
Welles to sign had evidently caused a more serious 
discussion among them about the form and language 
of the protest; for on Monday, September i, it was 
entirely rewritten by Bates, cut down to less than half 
its original length as drafted by Stanton, and once more 
signed by the same four members of the cabinet. 

Presented for the second time to Mr. Welles, he re- 
iterated his objection, and again refused his signa- 
ture. Though in the new form it bore the signatures 
of a majority of the cabinet, the paper was never pre- 
sented to Mr. Lincoln. The signers may have adopted 
the feeling of Mr. Welles that it was discourteous; 
or they may have thought that with only four mem- 
bers of the cabinet for it and three against it, it would 
be ineffectual; or, more likely than either, the mere 
progress of events may have brought them to con- 
sider it inexpedient. 

The defeat of Pope became final and conclusive on 
the afternoon of August 30, and his telegram announc- 
ing it conveyed an intimation that he had lost control 
of his army. President Lincoln had, therefore, to con- 
front a most serious crisis and danger. Even without 
having seen the written and signed protest, he was 
well aware of the feelings of the cabinet against Mc- 
Clellan. With what began to look like a serious con- 
spiracy among McClellan's officers against Pope, with 
Pope's army in a disorganized retreat upon Washing- 
ton, with the capital in possible danger of capture by 
Lee, and with a distracted and half-mutinous cabinet, 
the President had need of all his caution and all his 



ORDER OF SEPTEMBER 2 313 

wisdom. Both his patience and his judgment proved 
equal to the demand. 

On Monday, September 1, repressing every feeling 
of indignation, and solicitous only to make every ex- 
pedient contribute to the public safety, he called Mc- 
Clellan from Alexandria to Washington and asked him 
to use his personal influence with the officers who had 
been under his command to give a hearty and loyal 
support to Pope as a personal favor to their former 
general, and McClellan at once sent a telegram in this 
spirit. 

That afternoon, also, Mr. Lincoln despatched a 
member of General Halleck's staff to the Virginia side 
of the Potomac, who reported the disorganization and 
discouragement among the retreating troops as even 
more than had been expected. Worse than all, Hal- 
leck. the general-in-chief. who was much worn out by 
the labors of the past few days, seemed either unable 
or unwilling to act with prompt direction and com- 
mand equal to the emergency, though still willing to 
give his advice and suggestion. 

Under such conditions, Mr. Lincoln saw that it was 
necessary for him personally to exercise at the moment 
his military functions and authority as commander- 
in-chief of the army and navy. On the morning of 
September 2, therefore, he gave a verbal order, which 
during the day was issued in regular form as coming 
from the general-in-chief, that Major-General Mc- 
Clellan be placed in command of the fortifications 
around Washington and the troops for the defense of 
the capital. Mr. Lincoln made no concealment of his 
belief that McClellan had acted badly toward Pope and 
really wanted him to fail; "but there is no one in the 
army who can man these fortifications and lick these 
troops of ours into shape half as well as he can," he 



314 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

said. "We must use the tools we have; if he cannot 
fight himself, he excels in making others ready to 
fight." 

It turned out that the second battle of Bull Run had 
by no means so seriously disorganized the Union army 
as was reported, and that Washington had been ex- 
posed to no real danger. The Confederate army hov- 
ered on its front for a day or two, but made neither 
attack nor demonstration. Instead of this, Lee entered 
upon a campaign into Maryland, hoping that his pres- 
ence might stimulate a secession revolt in that State, 
and possibly create the opportunity successfully to 
attack Baltimore or Philadelphia. 

Pope having been relieved and sent to another de- 
partment, McClellan soon restored order among the 
troops, and displayed unwonted energy and vigilance 
in watching the movements of the enemy, as Lee grad- 
ually moved his forces northwestward toward Lees- 
burg, thirty miles from Washington, where he crossed 
the Potomac and took position at Frederick, ten miles 
farther away. McClellan gradually followed the 
movement of the enemy, keeping the Army of the 
Potomac constantly in a position to protect both Wash- 
ington and Baltimore against an attack. In this way 
it happened that without any order or express inten- 
tion on the part of either the general or the President, 
McClellan's duty became imperceptibly changed from 
that of merely defending Washington city to that of 
an active campaign into Maryland to follow the Con- 
federate army. 

This movement into Maryland was begun by both 
armies about September 4. On the thirteenth of that 
month McClellan had reached Frederick, while Lee 
was by that time across the Catoctin range at Boons- 
boro', but his army was divided. He had sent a large 



BATTLE OF ANTIETAM 3^5 

part of it back across the Potomac to capture Harper's 
Ferry and Martinsburg. On that day there fell into 
McClellan's hands the copy of an order issued by Gen- 
eral Lee three days before, which, as McClellan himself 
states in his report, fully disclosed Lee's plans. The 
situation was therefore, as follows: It was splendid 
September weather, with the roads in fine condition. 
McClellan commanded a total moving force of more 
than eighty thousand; Lee, a total moving force of 
forty thousand. The Confederate army was divided. 
Each of the separate portions was within twenty miles 
of the Union columns ; and before half-past six on the 
evening of September 13, McClellan had full know- 
ledge of the enemy's plans. 

General Palfrey, an intelligent critic friendly to 
McClellan, distinctly admits that the Union army, 
properly commanded, could have absolutely annihilated 
the Confederate forces. But the result proved quite 
different. Even such advantages in McClellan's hands 
failed to rouse him to vigorous and decisive action. 
As usual, hesitation and tardiness characterized the 
orders and movements of the Union forces, and during 
the four days succeeding, Lee had captured Harper's 
Ferry with eleven thousand prisoners and seventy- 
three pieces of artillery, reunited his army, and fought 
the defensive battle of Antietam on September 17, 
with almost every Confederate soldier engaged, while 
one third of McClellan's army was not engaged at all 
and the remainder went into action piecemeal and suc- 
cessively, under such orders that cooperative move- 
ment and mutual support were practically impossible. 
Substantially, it was a drawn battle, with appalling 
slaughter on both sides. 

Even after such a loss of opportunity, there still re- 
mained a precious balance of advantage in McClellan's 



316 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hands. Because of its smaller total numbers, the Con- 
federate army was disproportionately weakened by 
the losses in battle. The Potomac River was almost 
immediately behind it, and had McClellan renewed 
his attack on the morning of the eighteenth, as several 
of his best officers advised, a decisive victory was yet 
within his grasp. But with his usual hesitation, not- 
withstanding the arrival of two divisions of reinforce- 
ments, he waited all day to make up his mind. He in- 
deed gave orders to renew the attack at daylight on 
the nineteenth, but before that time the enemy had 
retreated across the Potomac, and McClellan tele- 
graphed, apparently with great satisfaction, that Mary- 
land was free and Pennsylvania safe. 

The President watched the progress of this cam- 
paign with an eagerness born of the lively hope that 
it might end the war. He sent several telegrams to the 
startled Pennsylvania authorities to assure them that 
Philadelphia and Harrisburg were in no danger. He 
ordered a reinforcement of twenty-one thousand to 
join McClellan. He sent a prompting telegram to that 
general : "Please do not let him [the enemy] get off 
without being hurt." He recognized the battle of 
Antietam as a substantial, if not a complete victory, and 
seized the opportunity it afforded him to issue his pre- 
liminary proclamation of emancipation on Septem- 
ber 22. 

For two weeks after the battle of Antietam, Gen- 
eral McClellan kept his army camped on various parts 
of the field, and so far from exhibiting any disposition 
of advancing against the enemy in the Shenandoah 
valley, showed constant apprehension lest the enemy 
might come and attack him. On October i, the Presi- 
dent and several friends made a visit to Antietam, and 
during the three succeeding days reviewed the troops 



"McCLELLAN'S BODY-GUARD" 317 

and went over the various battle-grounds in company 
with the general. The better insight which the Presi- 
dent thus received of the nature and results of the late 
battle served only to deepen in his mind the conviction 
he had long entertained — how greatly McClellan's de- 
fects overbalanced his merits as a military leader; and 
his impatience found vent in a phrase of biting irony. 
In a morning walk with a friend, waving his arm tow- 
ard the white tents of the great army, he asked: "Do 
you know what that is?" The friend, not catching 
the drift of his thought, said, "It is the Army of the 
Potomac, I suppose." "So it is called," responded the 
President, in a tone of suppressed indignation, "But 
that is a mistake. It is only McClellan's body-guard." 

At that time General McClellan commanded a total 
force of one hundred thousand men present for duty 
under his immediate eye, and seventy-three thousand 
present for duty under General Banks about Wash- 
ington. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that on 
October 6, the second clay after Mr. Lincoln's return 
to Washington, the following telegram went to the 
general from Halleck : 

"1 am instructed to telegraph you as follows: The 
President directs that you cross the Potomac and give 
battle to the enemy, or drive him south. Your army 
must move now while the roads are good. If you 
cross the river between the enemy and Washington, 
and cover the latter by your operation, you can be re- 
inforced with thirty thousand men. If you move up 
the valley of the Shenandoah, not more than twelve 
thousand or fifteen thousand can be sent to you. The 
President advises the interior line, between Wash- 
ington and the enemy, but does not order it. He is 
very desirous that your army move as soon as pos- 
sible. You will immediately report what line you 



318 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

adopt, and when you intend to cross the river; also to 
what point the reinforcements are to be sent. It is 
necessary that the plan of your operations be positively 
determined on before orders are given for building 
bridges and repairing railroads. I am directed to add 
that the Secretary of War and the general-in-chief 
fully concur with the President in these instructions." 

This express order was reinforced by a long letter 
from the President, dated October 13, specifically 
pointing out the decided advantages McClellan pos- 
sessed over the enemy, and suggesting a plan of cam- 
paign even to details, the importance and value of 
which was self-evident. 

"You remember my speaking to you of what I called 
your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious 
when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is 
constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least 
his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim? . . . 
Change positions with the enemy, and think you not 
he would break your communication with Richmond 
within the next twenty- four hours? You dread his 
going into Pennsylvania, but if he does so in full force, 
he gives up his communications to you absolutely, and 
you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin him. If 
he does so with less than full force, fall upon and beat 
what is left behind all the easier. Exclusive of the 
water-line, you are now nearer Richmond than the en- 
emy is by the route that you can and he must take. 
Why can you not reach there before him, unless you 
admit that he is more than your equal on a march? 
His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the 
chord. The roads are as good on yours as on his. 
You know I desired, but did not order, you to cross 
the Potomac below instead of above the Shenandoah 
and Blue Ridge. My idea was that this would at once 



McCLELLAN REMOVED 319 

menace the enemy's communications, which I would 
seize, if he would permit. If he should move north- 
ward I would follow him closely, holding his com- 
munications. If he should prevent our seizing his 
communications and move toward Richmond, I would 
press closely to him, fight him, if a favorable opportu- 
nity should present, and at least try to beat him to 
Richmond on the inside track. I say 'try' ; if we never 
try we shall never succeed. If he makes a stand at 
Winchester, moving neither north nor south, I would 
fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him 
when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never 
can when we bear the wastage of going to him." 

But advice, expostulation, argument, orders, were all 
wasted, now as before, on the unwilling, hesitating 
general. When he had frittered away another full 
month in preparation, in slowly crossing the Potomac, 
and in moving east of the Blue Ridge and massing his 
army about Warrenton, a short distance south of the 
battle-field of Bull Run, without a vigorous offensive, 
or any discernible intention to make one, the Presi- 
dent's patience was finally exhausted, and on November 
5 he sent him an order removing him from command. 
And so ended General McClellan's military career. 



XXIII 

Cameron's Report — Lincoln's Letter to Bancroft — Annual 
Message on Slavery — The Delaware Experiment — 
Joint Resolution on Compensated Abolishment — First 
Border State Interview — Stevens's Comment — District 
of Columbia Abolishment — Committee on Abolishment 
— Hunter's Order Revoked — Antislavery Measures of 
Congress — Second Border State Interview — Emancipa- 
tion Proposed and Postponed 

THE relation of the war to the institution of slavery 
has been touched upon in describing several in- 
cidents which occurred during 1861, namely, the desig- 
nation of fugitive slaves as "contraband," the Critten- 
den resolution and the confiscation act of the special 
session of Congress, the issuing and revocation of 
Fremont's proclamation, and various orders relating 
to contrabands in Union camps. The already men- 
tioned resignation of Secretary Cameron had also 
grown out of a similar question. In the form in which 
it was first printed, his report as Secretary of War to 
the annual session of Congress which met on Decem- 
ber 3, 1 86 1, announced: 

"If it shall be found that the men who have been held 
by the rebels as slaves are capable of bearing arms and 
performing efficient military service, it is the right, 
and may become the duty, of the government to arm 
and equip them, and employ their services against the 
rebels, under proper military regulation, discipline, and 
command." 

330 



LETTER TO BANCROFT 321 

The President was not prepared to permit a member 
of his cabinet, without his consent, to commit the ad- 
ministration to so radical a policy at that early date. 
He caused the advance copies of the document to be 
recalled and modified to the simple declaration that 
fugitive and abandoned slaves, being clearly an impor- 
tant military resource, should not be returned to rebel 
masters, but withheld from the enemy to be disposed 
of in future as Congress might deem best. Mr. Lin- 
coln saw clearly enough what a serious political role 
the slavery question was likely to play during the con- 
tinuance of the war. Replying to a letter from the 
Hon. George Bancroft, in which that accomplished 
historian predicted that posterity would not be satis- 
fied with the results of the war unless it should 
effect an increase of the free States, the President 
wrote : 

"The main thought in the closing paragraph of 
your letter is one which does not escape my attention, 
and with which I must deal in all due caution, and with 
the best judgment I can bring to it." 

This caution was abundantly manifested in his an- 
nual message to Congress of December 3, 1861 : 

"In considering the policy to be adopted for sup- 
pressing the insurrection," he wrote, "I have been anx- 
ious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this 
purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorse- 
less revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every 
case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the 
Union prominent as the primary object of the contest 
on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital 
military importance to the more deliberate action of 
the legislature. . . . The Union must be pre- 
served ; and hence all indispensable means must be em- 
ployed. We should not be in haste to determine that 



322 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

radical and extreme measures, which may reach the 
loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable." 

The most conservative opinion could not take alarm 
at phraseology so guarded and at the same time so de- 
cided; and yet it proved broad enough to include 
every great exigency which the conflict still had in 
store. 

Mr. Lincoln had indeed already maturely consid- 
ered and in his own mind adopted a plan of dealing 
with the slavery question : the simple plan which, while 
a member of Congress, he had proposed for adoption 
in the District of Columbia — the plan of voluntary 
compensated abolishment. At that time local and 
national prejudice stood in the way of its practicability ; 
but to his logical and reasonable mind it seemed now 
that the new conditions opened for it a prospect at 
least of initial success. 

In the late presidential election the little State of 
Delaware had, by a fusion between the Bell and the 
Lincoln vote, chosen a Union member of Congress, 
who identified himself in thought and action with the 
new administration. While Delaware was a slave 
State, only the merest remnant of the institution ex- 
isted there — seventeen hundred and ninety-eight slaves 
all told. Without any public announcement of his 
purpose, the President now proposed to the political 
leaders of Delaware, through their representative, a 
scheme for the gradual emancipation of these seven- 
teen hundred and ninety-eight slaves, on the payment 
therefor by the United States at the rate of four hun- 
dred dollars per slave, in annual instalments during 
thirty-one years to that State, the sum to be distributed 
by it to the individual owners. The President believed 
that if Delaware could be induced to take this step, 
Maryland might follow, and that these examples would 



GRADUAL EMANCIPATION 323 

create a sentiment that would lead other States into the 
same easy and beneficent path. But the ancient preju- 
dice still had its relentless grip upon some of the Dela- 
ware law-makers. A majority of the Delaware House 
indeed voted to entertain the scheme. But five of the 
nine members of the Delaware Senate, with hot parti- 
zan anathemas, scornfully repelled the "abolition 
bribe," as they called it, and the project withered in 
the bud. 

Mr. Lincoln did not stop at the failure of his Dela- 
ware experiment, but at once took an appeal to a 
broader section of public opinion. On March 6, 1862, 
he sent a special message to the two houses of Congress 
recommending the adoption of the following joint reso- 
lution : 

"Resolved, that the United States ought to cooperate 
with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment 
of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be 
used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for 
the inconveniences, public and private, produced by 
such change of system." 

"The point is not," said his explanatory message, 
"that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, 
if at all, initiate emancipation; but that while the offer 
is equally made to all, the more northern shall, by such 
initiation, make it certain to the more southern that in 
no event will the former ever join the latter in their 
proposed Confederacy. I say 'initiation' because, in 
my judgment, gradual, and not sudden, emancipation is 
better for all. . . . Such a proposition on the part 
of the general government sets up no claim of a right 
by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within 
State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control 
of the subject in each case to the State and its people 
immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter 



324 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of perfectly free choice with them. In the annual 
message last December I thought fit to say, 'The Union 
must be preserved ; and hence, all indispensable means 
must be employed.' I said this, not hastily, but delib- 
erately. War has been made, and continues to be, an 
indispensable means to this end. A practical ^ac- 
knowledgment of the national authority would render 
the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, 
however, resistance continues, the war must also con- 
tinue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents 
which may attend and all the ruin which may follow 
it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously 
promise great efficiency toward ending the struggle, 
must and will come." 

The Republican journals of the North devoted con- 
siderable discussion to the President's message and 
plan, which, in the main, were very favorably received. 
Objection was made, however, in some quarters that the 
proposition would be likely to fail on the score of ex- 
pense, and this objection the President conclusively 
answered in a private letter to a senator. 

"As to the expensiveness of the plan of gradual 
emancipation, with compensation, proposed in the late 
message, please allow me one or two brief suggestions. 
Less than one half-day's cost of this war would pay for 
all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars per 
head. . . . Again, less than eighty-seven days' 
cost of this war would, at the same price, pay for all 
in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ken- 
tucky, and Missouri. ... Do you doubt that tak- 
ing the initiatory steps on the part of those States and 
this District would shorten the war more than eighty- 
seven days, and thus be an actual saving of expense?" 

Four days after transmitting the message the Presi- 
dent called together the delegations in Congress from 



JOINT RESOLUTION 325 

the border slave States, and in a long and earnest per- 
sonal interview, in which he repeated and enforced the 
arguments of his message, urged upon them the expe- 
diency of adopting his plan, which he assured them he 
had proposed in the most friendly spirit, and with no 
intent to injure the interests or wound the sensibilities 
of the slave States. On the day following this inter- 
view the House of Representatives adopted the joint 
resolution by more than a two-thirds vote; ayes eighty- 
nine, nays thirty-one. Only a very few of the border 
State members had the courage to vote in the affirma- 
tive. The Senate also passed the joint resolution, by 
about a similar party division, not quite a month later ; 
the delay occurring through press of business rather 
than unwillingness. 

As yet, however, the scheme was tolerated rather 
than heartily indorsed by the more radical elements in 
Congress. Stevens, the cynical Republican leader of 
the House of Representatives, said : 

"I confess I have not been able to see what makes one 
side so anxious to pass it, or the other side so anxious 
to defeat it. I think it is about the most diluted milk- 
and-water-gruel proposition that was ever given to the 
American nation." 

Bui the bulk of the Republicans, though it proposed 
no immediate practical legislation, nevertheless voted 
for it, as a declaration of purpose in harmony with a 
pending measure, and as being, on the one hand, a trib- 
ute to antislavery opinion in the North, and, on the 
other, an expression of liberality toward the border 
States. The concurrent measure of practical legislation 
was a bill for the immediate emancipation of the slaves 
in the District of Columbia, on the payment to their 
loyal owners of an average sum of three hundred dol- 
lars for each slave, and for the appointment of a com- 



326 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mission to assess and award the amount. The bill was 
introduced early in the session, and its discussion was 
much stimulated by the President's special message 
and joint resolution. Like other antislavery measures, 
it was opposed by the Democrats and supported by the 
Republicans, with but trifling exceptions; and by the 
same majority of two thirds was passed by the Senate 
on April 3, and the House on April 11, and became a 
law by the President's signature on April 16. 

The Republican majority in Congress as well as the 
President was thus pledged to the policy of compen- 
sated abolishment, both by the promise of the joint 
resolution and the fulfilment carried out in the Dis- 
trict bill. If the representatives and senators of the 
border slave States had shown a willingness to accept 
the generosity of the government, they could have 
avoided the pecuniary sacrifice which overtook the 
slave owners in those States not quite three years later. 
On April 14, in the House of Representatives, the sub- 
ject was taken up by Mr. White of Indiana, at whose 
instance a select committee on emancipation, consisting 
of nine members, a majority of whom were from 
border slave States, was appointed ; and this committee 
on July 16 reported a comprehensive bill authorizing 
the President to give compensation at the rate of three 
hundred dollars for each slave to any one of the States 
of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennes- 
see, and Missouri, that might adopt immediate or grad- 
ual emancipation. Some subsequent proceedings on 
this subject occurred in Congress in the case of Mis- 
souri ; but as to the other States named in the bill, either 
the neglect or open opposition of their people and rep- 
resentatives and senators prevented any further action 
from the committee. 

Meanwhile a new incident once more brought the 



HUNTER'S ORDER REVOKED 327 

question of military emancipation into sharp public 
discussion. On May 9, General David Hunter, com- 
manding the Department of the South, which consisted 
mainly of some sixty or seventy miles of the South 
Carolina coast between North Edisto River and War- 
saw Sound, embracing the famous Sea Island cotton 
region which fell into Union hands by the capture of 
Port Royal in 1861, issued a military order which 
declared : 

"Slavery and martial law in a free country are alto- 
gether incompatible; the persons in these three States 
— Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina — heretofore 
held as slaves are therefore declared forever free." 

The news of this order, coming by the slow course 
of ocean mails, greatly surprised Mr. Lincoln, and his 
first comment upon it was positive and emphatic. 
"No commanding general shall do such a thing, upon 
my responsibility, without consulting me," he wrote to 
Secretary Chase. Three days later. May 19, [862, 
he published a proclamation declaring Hunter's order 
entirely unauthorized and void, and adding: 

"I further make known that whether it be compe- 
tent for me, as commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, 
and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall have 
become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance 
of the government to exercise such supposed power, 
are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve 
to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving 
to the decision of commanders in the field. These are 
totally different questions from those of police regula- 
tions in armies and camps." 

This distinct reservation of executive power, and 
equally plain announcement of the contingency which 
would justify its exercise, was coupled with a renewed 



328 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

recital of his plan and offer of compensated abolish- 
ment, and reinforced by a powerful appeal to the public 
opinion of the border slave States. 

"I do not argue," continued the proclamation, "I 
beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves. 
You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the 
times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged considera- 
tion of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal 
and partizan politics. This proposal makes common 
cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon 
any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contem- 
plates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not 
rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace 
it ? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in 
all past time, as in the providence of God it is now 
your high privilege to do. May the vast future not 
have to lament that you have neglected it." 

This proclamation of President Lincoln's naturally 
created considerable and very diverse comment, but 
much less than would have occurred had not military 
events intervened which served in a great degree to 
absorb public attention. At the date of the proclama- 
tion McClellan, with the Army of the Potomac, was 
just reaching the Chickahominy in his campaign to- 
ward Richmond ; Stonewall Jackson was about begin- 
ning his startling raid into the Shenandoah valley; 
and Halleck was pursuing his somewhat leisurely cam- 
paign against Corinth. On the day following the 
proclamation the victorious fleet of Farragut reached 
Vicksburg in its first ascent of the Mississippi. Con- 
gress was busy with the multifarious work that 
crowded the closing weeks of the long session; and 
among this congressional work the debates and pro- 
ceedings upon several measures of positive and imme- 
diate antislavery legislation were significant "signs of 



ANTISLAVERY MEASURES 329 

the times." During the session, and before it ended, 
acts or amendments were passed prohibiting the army 
from returning fugitive slaves; recognizing the inde- 
pendence and sovereignty of Haiti and Liberia; pro- 
viding for carrying into effect the treaty with England 
to suppress the African slave trade ; restoring the Mis- 
souri Compromise and extending its provisions to all 
United States Territories ; greatly increasing the scope 
of the confiscation act in freeing slaves actually em- 
ployed in hostile military service; and giving the 
President authority, if not in express terms, at least 
by easy implication, to organize and arm negro regi- 
ments for the war. 

But between the President's proclamation and the 
adjournment of Congress military affairs underwent 
a most discouraging change. McClellan's advance 
upon Richmond became a retreat to Harrison's Land- 
ing. Halleck captured nothing but empty forts at 
Corinth. Farragut found no cooperation at Vicks- 
burg, and returned to New Orleans, leaving its hostile 
guns still barring the commerce of the great river. 
Still worse, the country was plunged into gloomy fore- 
bodings by the President's call for three hundred thou- 
sand new troops. 

About a week before the adjournment of Congress 
the President again called together the delegations 
from the border slave States, and read to them, in a 
carefully prepared paper, a second and most urgent 
appeal to adopt his plan of compensated abolishment. 

"Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely 
and certainly that in no event will the States you repre- 
sent ever join their proposed confederacy, and they 
cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you 
cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you 
with them so long as you show a determination to per- 



330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

petuate the institution within your own States. Beat 
them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly done, 
and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. 
You and I know what the lever of their power is. 
Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake 
you no more forever. . . . If the war continues 
long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the 
institution in your States will be extinguished by mere 
friction and abrasion — by the mere incidents of the 
war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valu- 
able in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. 
How much better for you and for your people to take 
the step which at once shortens the war and secures 
substantial compensation for that which is sure to be 
wholly lost in any other event. How much better to 
thus save the money which else we sink forever in the 
war. . . . Our common country is in great peril, 
demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to 
bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of gov- 
ernment is saved to the world, its beloved history and 
cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy 
future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand. 
To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given 
to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and 
to link your own names therewith forever." 

Even while the delegations listened, Mr. Lincoln 
could see that events had not yet ripened their minds 
to the acceptance of his proposition. In their written 
replies, submitted a few days afterward, two thirds of 
them united in a qualified refusal, which, while rec- 
ognizing the President's patriotism and reiterating 
their own loyalty, urged a number of rather unsubstan- 
tial excuses. The minority replies promised to submit 
the proposal fairly to the people of their States, but 
could of course give no assurance that it would be wel- 



EMANCIPATION POSTPONED 331 

corned by their constituents. The interview itself only 
served to confirm the President in an alternative course 
of action upon which his mind had doubtless dwelt for 
a considerable time with intense solicitude, and which 
is best presented in the words of his own recital. 

"It had got to be," said he, in a conversation with 
the artist F. B. Carpenter, "midsummer, 1862. Things 
had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had 
reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations 
we had been pursuing; that we had about played our 
last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the 
game. I now determined upon the adoption of the 
emancipation policy; and, without consultation with, 
or the knowledge of, the cabinet, I prepared the origi- 
nal draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious 
thought called a cabinet meeting upon the subject. 
. . . All were present excepting Mr. Blair, the 
Postmaster-General, who was absent at the opening of 
the discussion, but came in subsequently. I said to the 
cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not 
called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the 
subject-matter of a proclamation before them, sug- 
gestions as to which would be in order after they had 
heard it read." 

It was on July 22 that the President read to his cabi- 
net the draft of this first emancipation proclamation, 
which, after a formal warning against continuing the 
rebellion, was in the following words : 

"And I hereby make known that it is my purpose, 
upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recom- 
mend the adoption of a practical measure for tendering 
pecuniary aid to the free choice or rejection of any 
and all States which may then be recognizing and 
practically sustaining the authority of the United 
States, and which may then have voluntarily adopted, 



332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, gradual abolish- 
ment of slavery within such State or States; that the 
object is to practically restore, thenceforward to be 
maintained, the constitutional relation between the gen- 
eral government and each and all the States wherein 
that relation is now suspended or disturbed; and that 
for this object the war, as it has been, will be prose- 
cuted. And as a fit and necessary military measure 
for effecting this object, I, as commander-in-chief of 
the army and navy of the United States, do order and 
declare that on the first day of January, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, 
all persons held as slaves within any State or States 
wherein the constitutional authority of the United 
States shall not then be practically recognized, sub- 
mitted to, and maintained, shall then, thenceforward, 
and forever be free." 

Mr. Lincoln had given a confidential intimation of 
this step to Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles on the day 
following the border State interview, but to all the 
other members of the cabinet it came as a complete sur- 
prise. Blair thought it would cost the administration 
the fall elections. Chase preferred that emancipation 
should be proclaimed by commanders in the several 
military districts. Seward, approving the measure, 
suggested that it be postponed until it could be given to 
the country supported by military success, instead of 
issuing it, as would be the case then, upon the greatest 
disasters of the war. Mr. Lincoln's recital continues : 

"The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State 
struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of 
the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had 
entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the 
draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch 
for a picture, waiting for a victory." 



XXIV 

Criticism of the President for his Action on Slavery- 
Lincoln's Letters to Louisiana Friends — Greeley's Open 
Letter— Mr. Lincoln's Reply — Chicago Clergymen 
Urge Emancipation — Lincoln's Answer — Lincoln Is- 
sues Preliminary Proclamation— President Proposes 
Constitutional Amendment — Cabinet Considers Final 
Proclamation — Cabinet Discusses Admission of West 
Virginia — Lincoln Signs Edict of Freedom — Lincoln's 
Letter to Hodges 

THE secrets of the government were so well kept 
that no hint whatever came to the public that the 
President had submitted to the cabinet the draft of an 
emancipation proclamation. Between that date and the 
battle of the second Bull Run intervened the period of a 
full month, during which, in the absence of military 
movements or congressional proceedings to furnish 
exciting news, both private individuals and public 
journals turned a new and somewhat vindictive fire of 
criticism upon the administration. For this they 
seized upon the ever-ready text of the ubiquitous sla- 
very question. Upon this issue the conservatives 
protested indignantly that the President had been too 
fast, while, contrarywise, the radicals clamored loudly 
that he had been altogether too slow. We have seen 
how his decision was unalterably taken and his course 
distinctly marked out, but that he was not yet ready 
publicly to announce it. Therefore, during this period 

333 



334 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of waiting for victory, he underwent the difficult 
task of restraining the impatience of both sides, 
which he did in very positive language. Thus, 
under date of July 26, 1862, he wrote to a friend in 
Louisiana : 

"Yours of the sixteenth, by the hand of Governor 
Shepley, is received. It seems the Union feeling in 
Louisiana is being crushed out by the course of Gen- 
eral Phelps. Please pardon me for believing that is 
a false pretense. The people of Louisiana — all intelli- 
gent people everywhere — know full well that I never 
had a wish to touch the foundations of their society, or 
any right of theirs. With perfect knowledge of this, 
they forced a necessity upon me to send armies among 
them, and it is their own fault, not mine, that they are 
annoyed by the presence of General Phelps. They also 
know the remedy — know how to be cured of General 
Phelps. Remove the necessity of his presence. . . . 
I am a patient man — always willing to forgive on the 
Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample 
time for repentance. Still, I must save this govern- 
ment, if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will 
not do ; but it may as well be understood, once for all, 
that I shall not surrender this game leaving any avail- 
able card unplayed." 

Two days later he answered another Louisiana 
critic : 

"Mr. Durant complains that, in various ways, the 
relation of master and slave is disturbed by the pres- 
ence of our army, and he considers it particularly vexa- 
tious that this, in part, is done under cover of an act 
of Congress, while constitutional guarantees are sus- 
pended on the plea of military necessity. The truth 
is that what is done and omitted about slaves is done 



GREELEY'S OPEN LETTER 335 

and omitted on the same military necessity. It is a 
military necessity to have men and money ; and we can 
get neither in sufficient numbers or amounts if we 
keep from or drive from our lines slaves coming to 
them. Mr. Durant cannot be ignorant of the pressure 
in this direction, nor of my efforts to hold it within 
bounds till he and such as he shall have time to help 
themselves. . . . What would you do in my posi- 
tion ? Would you drop the war where it is ? Or would 
you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts 
charged with rose-water? Would you deal lighter 
blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up 
the contest, leaving any available means unapplied? 
I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than 
I can, and I shall do all I can. to save the government, 
which is my sworn duty as well as my personal incli- 
nation. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal 
with is too vast for malicious dealing." 

The President could afford to overlook the misrep- 
resentations and invective of the professedly opposition 
newspapers, but he had also to meet the over-zeal of 
influential Republican editors of strong antislavery 
bias. Horace Greeley printed, in the New York 
"Tribune" of August 20, a long "open letter" ostenta- 
tiously addressed to Mr. Lincoln, full of unjust cen- 
sure, all based on the general accusation that the Presi- 
dent, and many army officers as well, were neglecting 
their duty under pro-slavery influences and sentiments. 
The open letter which Mr. Lincoln wrote in reply is 
remarkable not alone for the skill with which it sepa- 
rated the true from the false issue of the moment, but 
also for the equipoise and dignity with which it main- 
tained his authority as moral arbiter between the con- 
tending factions. 



336 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"Executive Mansion, Washington, 

August 22, 1862. 
"Hon. Horace Greeley. 

"Dear Sir : I have just read yours of the nineteenth, 
addressed to myself through the New York Tribune.' 
If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact 
which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and 
here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences 
which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now 
and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible 
in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in 
deference to an old friend whose heart I have always 
supposed to be right. 

"As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, 
I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

"I would save the Union. I would save it the short- 
est way under the Constitution. The sooner the na- 
tional authority can be restored, the nearer the Union 
will be 'the Union as it was.' If there be those who 
would not save the Union unless they could at the same 
time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there 
be those who would not save the Union unless they 
could, at the same time, destroy slavery, I do not agree 
with them. My paramount object in this struggle is 
to save the Union, and is not either to save or to de- 
stroy slavery. If I could save the Union without 
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it 
by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could 
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I 
would also do that. What I do about slavery and the 
colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save 
the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I 
do not believe it would help to save the Union. I 
shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing 
hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall 



LINCOLN'S ANSWER 337 

believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to 
correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall 
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true 
views. 

"I have here stated my purpose according to my view 
of official duty; and I intend no modification of my 
oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere 
could be free. 

"Yours, 

"A. Lincoln." 

It can hardly be doubted that President Lincoln, 
when he wrote this letter, intended that it should have 
a twofold effect upon public opinion : first, that it 
should curb extreme antislavery sentiment to greater 
patience; secondly, that it should rouse dogged pro- 
slavery conservatism, and prepare it for the announce- 
ment which he had resolved to make at the first fitting 
opportunity. At the date of the letter, he very well 
knew that a serious conflict of arms was soon likely 
to occur in Virginia ; and he had strong reason to hope 
that the junction of the armies of McClellan and Pope 
which rfad been ordered, and was then in progress, 
could be successfully effected, and would result in a 
decisive Union victory. This hope, however, was 
sadly disappointed. The second battle of Bull Run, 
which occurred one week after the Greeley letter, 
proved a serious defeat, and necessitated a further post- 
ponement of his contemplated action. 

As a secondary effect of the new disaster, there came 
upon him once more an increased pressure to make 
reprisal upon what was assumed to be the really vul- 
nerable side of the rebellion. On September 13, he was 
visited by an influential deputation from the religious 
denominations of Chicago, urging him to issue at once 



338 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a proclamation of universal emancipation. His reply- 
to them, made in the language of the most perfect cour- 
tesy, nevertheless has in it a tone of rebuke that in- 
dicates the state of irritation and high sensitiveness 
under which he was living from day to day. In the 
actual condition of things, he could neither safely sat- 
isfy them nor deny them. As any answer he could 
make would be liable to misconstruction, he devoted the 
larger part of it to pointing out the unreasonableness 
of their dogmatic insistence : 

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions 
and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally 
certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure 
that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that 
belief, and perhaps, in some respects, both. I hope it 
will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable 
that God would reveal his will to others, on a point 
so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he 
would reveal it directly to me. . . . What good 
would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, 
especially as we are now situated? I do not want to 
issue a document that the whole world will see must 
necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against 
the comet. . . . Understand, I raise no objections 
against it on legal or constitutional grounds, for, as 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy in time of 
war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure 
which may best subdue the enemy; nor do I urge ob- 
jections of a moral nature, in view of possible conse- 
quences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I 
view this matter as a practical war measure, to be de- 
cided on according to the advantages or disadvantages 
it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion. . . . 
Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned 
these objections. They indicate the difficulties that 
have thus far prevented my action in some such way 



SEPTEMBER PROCLAMATION 339 

as you desire. I have not decided against a proclama- 
tion of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under 
advisement. And I can assure you that the subject 
is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. 
Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do." 

Four days after this interview the battle of Antie- 
tam was fought, and when, after a few days of uncer- 
tainty, it was ascertained that it could be reasonably 
claimed as a Union victory, the President resolved to 
carry out his long-matured purpose. The diary of 
Secretary Chase has recorded a very full report of the 
interesting transaction. On this ever memorable Sep- 
tember 22, 1862, after some playful preliminary talk, 
Mr. Lincoln said to his cabinet : 

"Gentlemen : I have, as you are aware, thought 
a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery; 
and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read 
to you an order I had prepared on this subject, which, 
on account of objections made by some of you, was 
not issued. Ever since then my mind has been much 
occupied with this subject, and I have thought, all 
along, that the time for acting on it might probably 
come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a 
better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. 
The action of the army against the rebels has not been 
quite what I should have best liked. But they have 
been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no 
longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army 
was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should 
be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of 
emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be use- 
ful. I said nothing to any one, but I made the promise 
to myself and [hesitating a little] to my Maker. The 
rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfil 
that promise. I have got you together to hear what I 
have written down. I do not wish your advice about 



34Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the main matter, for that I have determined for my- 
self. This I say without intending anything but respect 
for any one of you. But I already know the views of 
each on this question. They have been heretofore ex- 
pressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and 
carefully as I can. What I have written is that which 
my reflections have determined me to say. If there is 
anything in the expressions I use, or in any minor mat- 
ter, which any one of you thinks had best be changed, 
I shall be glad to receive the suggestions. One other 
observation I will make. I know very well that many 
others might, in this matter as in others, do better than 
I can ; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence 
was more fully possessed by any one of them than by 
me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he 
could be put in my place, he should have it. I would 
gladly yield it to him. But, though I believe that I have 
not so much of the confidence of the people as I had 
some time since, I do not know that, all things consid- 
ered, any other person has more ; and, however this may 
be, there is no way in which I can have any other man 
put where I am. I am here ; I must do the best I can, 
and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I 
feel I ought to take." 

The members of the cabinet all approved the policy 
of the measure; Mr. Blair only objecting that he 
thought the time inopportune, while others suggested 
some slight amendments. In the new form in which 
it was printed on the following morning, the docu- 
ment announced a renewal of the plan of compensated 
abolishment, a continuance of the effort at voluntary 
colonization, a promise to recommend ultimate com- 
pensation to loyal owners, and — 

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all 



SEPTEMBER PROCLAMATION 34 1 

persons held as slaves within any State, or designated 
part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in re- 
bellion against the United States, shall be then, thence- 
forward, and forever free; and the executive govern- 
ment of the United States, including the military and 
naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain 
the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts 
to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts 
they may make for their actual freedom." 

Pursuant to these announcements, the President's 
annual message of December i, 1862, recommended 
to Congress the passage of a joint resolution proposing 
to the legislatures of the several States a constitutional 
amendment consisting of three articles, namely : One 
providing compensation in bonds for every State which 
should abolish slavery before the year 1900; another 
securing freedom to all slaves who, during the rebel- 
lion, had enjoyed actual freedom by the chances of war 
— also providing compensation to legal owners ; the 
third authorizing Congress to provide for colonization. 
The long and practical argument in which he renewed 
this plan, "not in exclusion of, but additional to, all 
others for restoring and preserving the national au- 
thority throughout the Union," concluded with the fol- 
lowing eloquent sentences: 

"We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can 
any of us imagine better?' but, 'Can we all do better?' 
Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, 
'Can we do better?' The dogmas of the quiet past are 
inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is 
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the 
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew 
and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then 
we shall save our country. 

"Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of 



342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

this Congress and this administration, will be remem- 
bered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, 
or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The 
fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, 
in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We 
say we are for the Union. The world will not forget 
that we say this. We know how to save the Union. 
The world knows we do know how to save it. We — 
even we here — hold the power and bear the re- 
sponsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure 
freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give 
and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly 
lose, the last, best hope of earth. Other means may 
succeed, this could not fail. The way is plain, peace- 
ful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the 
world will forever applaud, and God must forever 
bless." 

But Mr. Lincoln was not encouraged by any re- 
sponse to this earnest appeal, either from Congress or 
by manifestations of public opinion. Indeed, it may be 
fairly presumed that he expected none. Perhaps he 
considered it already a sufficient gain that it was si- 
lently accepted as another admonition of the conse- 
quences which not he nor his administration, but the 
Civil War, with its relentless agencies, was rapidly 
bringing about. He was becoming more and more 
conscious of the silent influence of his official utterances 
on public sentiment, if not to convert obstinate opposi- 
tion, at least to reconcile it to patient submission. 

In that faith he steadfastly went on carrying out his 
well-matured plan, the next important step of which 
was the fulfilment of the announcements made in the 
preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 
22. On December 30, he presented to each member 
of his cabinet a copy of the draft he had carefully made 



EDICT OF FREEDOM 343 

of the new and final proclamation to be issued on New 
Year's day. It will be remembered that as early as July 
22, he informed the cabinet that the main question in- 
volved he had decided for himself. Now, as twice be- 
fore, it was only upon minor points that he asked their 
advice and suggestion, for which object he placed 
these drafts in their hands for verbal and collateral 
criticism. 

In addition to the central point of military emanci- 
pation in all the States yet in rebellion, the President's 
draft for the first time announced his intention to in- 
corporate a portion of the newly liberated slaves into 
the armies of the Union. This policy had also been 
under discussion at the first consideration of the subject 
in July. Mr. Lincoln had then already seriously con- 
sidered it, but thought it inexpedient and productive of 
more evil than good at that date. In his judgment, 
the time had now arrived for energetically adopting it. 
On the following day, December 31, the members 
brought back to the cabinet meeting their several crit- 
icisms and suggestions on the draft he had given them. 
Perhaps the most important one was that earnestly 
pressed by Secretary Chase, that the new proclamation 
should make no exceptions of fractional parts of States 
controlled by the Union armies, as in Louisiana and 
Virginia, save the forty-eight counties of the latter 
designated as West Virginia, then in process of forma- 
tion and admission as a new State ; the constitutionality 
of which, on this same December 31, was elaborately 
discussed in writing by the members of the cabinet, and 
affirmatively decided by the President. 

On the afternoon of December 31, the cabinet meet- 
ing being over, Mr. Lincoln once more carefully re- 
wrote the proclamation, embodying in it the sug- 
gestions which had been made as to mere verbal 



344 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



improvements ; but he rigidly adhered to his own draft 
in retaining the exceptions as to fractional parts of 
States and the forty-eight counties of West Virginia ; 
and also his announcement of intention to enlist the 
freedmen in military service. Secretary Chase had 
submitted the form of a closing paragraph. This the 
President also adopted, but added to it, after the words 
"warranted by the Constitution," his own important 
qualifying correction, "upon military necessity." 

The full text of the weighty document will be found 
in a foot-note. 1 It recited the announcement of the 



1 By the President of the 

United States of America: 

A Proclamation. 

Whereas on the twenty-second 
day of September, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand eight hun- 
dred and sixty-two, a proclamation 
was issued by the President of the 
United States, containing, among 
other things, the following, to wit : 

"That on the first day of Janu- 
ary, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
three, all persons held as slaves 
within any State, or designated part 
of a State, the people whereof shall 
then be in rebellion against the 
United States, shall be then, thence- 
forward and forever free ; and the 
executive government of the United 
States, including the military and 
naval authority thereof, will recog- 
nize and maintain the freedom of 
such persons, and will do no act or 
acts to repress such persons, or any 
of them, in any e'fforts they may 
make for their actual freedom. 

" That the Executive will, on the 
first day of January aforesaid, by 
proclamation, designate the States 
and parts of States, if any, in which 
the people thereof respectively 
shall then be in rebellion against 
the United States ; and the fact that 



any State, or the people thereof, 
shall on that day be in good faith 
represented in the Congress of the 
United States by members chosen 
thereto at elections wherein a ma- 
jority of the qualified voters of such 
State shall have participated, shall, 
in the absence of strong counter- 
vailing testimony, be deemed con- 
clusive evidence that such State and 
the people thereof are not then in 
rebellion against the United 
States." 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham 
Lincoln, President of the United 
States, by virtue of the power in 
me vested as commander-in-chief 
of the army and navy of the United 
States, in time of actual armed re- 
bellion against the authority and 
government of the United States, 
and as a fit and necessary war mea- 
sure for suppressing said rebellion, 
do, on this first day of January, in 
the year of our Lord one thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-three, and 
in accordance with my purpose so 
to do, publicly proclaimed for the 
full period of one hundred days 
from the day first above mentioned, 
order and designate as the States 
and parts of States wherein the peo- 
ple thereof, respectively, are this 
day in rebellion against the United 
States, the following, to wit : 



EDICT OF FREEDOM 



345 



September proclamation; defined its character and au- 
thority as a military decree ; designated the States and 
parts of States that day in rebellion against the gov- 
ernment; ordered and declared that all persons held 
as slaves therein "are and henceforward shall be free"; 
and that such persons of suitable condition would be 
received into the military service. "And upon this act, 
sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted 
by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious 
favor of Almighty God." 

The conclusion of the momentous transaction was 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (ex- 
cept the parishes of St. Bernard, 
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, 
St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, 
Assumption, Terre Bonne, La- 
fourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and 
Orleans, including the city of New- 
Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, 
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, 
North Carolina, and Virginia (ex- 
cept the forty-eight counties desig- 
nated as West Virginia, and also 
the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, 
Northampton, Elizabeth City, 
York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, 
including the cities of Norfolk and 
Portsmouth), and which excepted 
parts are for the present left pre- 
cisely as if this proclamation were 
not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and 
for the purpose aforesaid, I do or- 
der and declare that all persons held 
as slaves within said designated 
States and parts of States are, and 
henceforward shall be, free ; and 
that the executive government of 
the United States, including the 
military and naval authorities there- 
of, will recognize and maintain the 
freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the 
people so declared to be free to ab- 
stain from all violence, unless in 



necessary self-defense ; and I rec- 
ommend to them that, in all cases 
when allowed, they labor faithfully 
for reasonable wages. 

And I further declare and make 
known that such persons of suitable 
condition will be received into the 
armed service of the United States 
to garrison forts, positions, sta- 
tions, and other places, and to man 
vessels of all sorts in said service. 
And upon this act, sincerely be- 
lieved to be an act of justice, war- 
ranted by the Constitution upon 
military necessity, I invoke the 
considerate judgment of mankind 
and the gracious favor of Almighty 
God. 

In witness whereof, I have here- 
unto set my hand, and caused the 
seal of the United States to be 
affixed. 

Done at the city of Wash- 
ington, this first day of Jan- 
uary, in the year of our Lord 
one thousand eight hundred 
and sixty-three, and of the 
independence of the United 
States of America the eighty- 
seventh. 

Abraham Lincoln. 
By the President : 

William H. Seward, 

Secretary of State. 



L. S. 



346 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

as deliberate and simple as had been its various 
stages of preparation. The morning and midday of 
January I, 1863, were occupied by the half-social, half- 
official ceremonial of the usual New Year's day recep- 
tion at the Executive Mansion, established by long cus- 
tom. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, after 
full three hours of greetings and handshakings, Mr. 
Lincoln and perhaps a dozen persons assembled in the 
executive office, and, without any prearranged cere- 
mony, the President affixed his signature to the great 
Edict of Freedom. No better commentary will ever 
be written upon this far-reaching act than that which 
he himself embodied in a letter written to a friend a 
little more than a year later : 

"I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, 
nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not 
so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that 
the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right 
to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was 
in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my 
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution 
of the United States. I could not take the office with- 
out taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might 
take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using 
the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil 
administration this oath even forbade me to practi- 
cally indulge my primary abstract judgment on the 
moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared 
this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, 
to this day, I have done no official act in mere defer- 
ence to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. 
I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve 
the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon 
me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable 
means, that government, that nation, of which that 



LETTER TO HODGES 347 

Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to 
lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution ? By 
general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often 
a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is 
never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures 
otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by be- 
coming indispensable to the preservation of the Con- 
stitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right 
or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. 
I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had 
even tried to preserve the Constitution if, to save 
slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the 
wreck of government, country, and Constitution all 
together. When, early in the war, General Fremont 
attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because 
I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. 
When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary 
of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected 
because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. 
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military 
emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet 
think the indispensable necessity had come. When in 
March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and 
successive appeals to the border States to favor com- 
pensated emancipation. T believed the indispensable ne- 
cessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks 
would come unless averted by that measure. They de- 
clined the proposition, and I was. in my best judgment, 
driven to the alternative of either surrendering the 
Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong 
hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter." 



XXV 

Negro Soldiers — Fort Pillow — Retaliation — Draft — 
Northern Democrats — Governor Seymour's Attitude — 
Draft Riots in New York — Vallandigham — Lincoln on 
his Authority to Suspend Writ of Habeas Corpus — 
Knights of the Golden Circle — Jacob Thompson in 
Canada 

ON the subject of negro soldiers, as on many other 
topics, the period of active rebellion and civil 
war had wrought a profound change in public opinion. 
From the foundation of the government to the Re- 
bellion, the horrible nightmare of a possible slave in- 
surrection had brooded over the entire South. This 
feeling naturally had a sympathetic reflection in the 
North, and at first produced an instinctive shrinking 
from any thought of placing arms in the hands of the 
blacks whom the chances of war had given practical 
or legal freedom. During the year 1862, a few spo- 
radic efforts were made by zealous individuals, under 
apparently favoring conditions, to begin the formation 
of colored regiments. The eccentric Senator Lane 
tried it in Kansas, or, rather, along the Missouri bor- 
der, without success. General Hunter made an experi- 
ment in South Carolina, but found the freedmen too 
unwilling to enlist, and the white officers too prejudiced 
to instruct them. General Butler, at New Orleans, in- 
fused his wonted energy into a similar attempt, with 
somewhat better results. He found that before the 
capture of the city, Governor Moore of Louisiana had 
348 



NEGRO SOLDIERS 349 

begun the organization of a regiment of free colored 
men for local defense. Butler resuscitated this organ- 
ization, for which he thus had the advantage of Con- 
federate example and precedent, and against which 
the accusation of arming slaves could not be urged. 
Early in September, Butler reported, with his usual 
biting sarcasm: 

"I shall. also have within ten days a regiment, one 
thousand strong, of native guards (colored), the dark- 
est of whom will be about the complexion of the late 
Mr. Webster." 

All these efforts were made under implied, rather 
than expressed provisions of law, and encountered 
more or less embarrassment in obtaining pay and sup- 
plies, because they were not distinctly recognized in the 
army regulations. This could not well be done so long 
as the President considered the policy premature. His 
spirit of caution in this regard was set forth by the 
Secretary of War in a letter of instruction dated July 
3, 1862: 

"He is of opinion," wrote Mr. Stanton, "that under 
the laws of Congress, they [the former slaves] cannot 
be sent back to their masters ; that in common human- 
ity they must not be permitted to suffer for want of 
food, shelter, or other necessaries of life; that to this 
end they should be provided for by the quartermaster's 
and commissary's departments, and that those who 
are capable of labor should be set to work and paid 
reasonable wages. In directing this to be done, the 
President does not mean, at present, to settle any gen- 
eral rule in respect to slaves or slavery, but simply to 
provide for the particular case under the circumstances 
in which it is now presented." 

All this was changed by the final proclamation of 
emancipation, which authoritatively announced that 



350 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

persons of suitable condition, whom it declared free, 
would be received into the armed service of the United 
States. During the next few months, the President 
wrote several personal letters to General Dix, com- 
manding at Fortress Monroe ; to Andrew Johnson, mil- 
itary governor of Tennessee; to General Banks, com- 
manding at New Orleans; and to General Hunter, in 
the Department of the South, urging their attention 
to promoting the new policy; and, what was yet more 
to the purpose, a bureau was created in the War De- 
partment having special charge of the duty, and the 
adjutant-general of the army was personally sent to 
the Union camps on the Mississippi River to superin- 
tend the recruitment and enlistment of the negroes, 
where, with the hearty cooperation of General Grant 
and other Union commanders, he met most encourag- 
ing and gratifying success. 

The Confederate authorities made a great outcry 
over the new departure. They could not fail to see 
the immense effect it was destined to have in the severe 
military struggle, and their prejudice of generations 
greatly intensified the gloomy apprehensions they no 
doubt honestly felt. Yet even allowing for this, the 
exaggerated language in which they described it be- 
came absolutely ludicrous. The Confederate War 
Department early declared Generals Hunter and Phelps 
to be outlaws, because they were drilling and organiz- 
ing slaves; and the sensational proclamation issued 
by Jefferson Davis on December 23, 1862, ordered 
that Butler and his commissioned officers, "robbers and 
criminals deserving death, ... be, whenever 
captured, reserved for execution." 

Mr. Lincoln's final emancipation proclamation ex- 
cited them to a still higher frenzy. The Confederate 
Senate talked of raising the black flag; Jefferson 
Davis's message stigmatized it as "the most execrable 



FORT PILLOW 35i 

measure recorded in the history of guilty man"; and 
a joint resolution of the Confederate Congress pre- 
scribed that white officers of negro Union soldiers 
"shall, if captured, be put to death, or be otherwise 
punished at the discretion of the court." The gen- 
eral orders of some subordinate Confederate com- 
manders repeated or rivaled such denunciations and 
threats. 

Fortunately, the records of the war are not stained 
with either excesses by the colored troops or even a 
single instance of such proclaimed barbarity upon white 
Union officers; and the visitation of vengeance upon 
negro soldiers is confined, so far as known, to the sin- 
gle instance of the massacre at Fort Pillow. In that 
deplorable affair, the Confederate commander reported, 
by telegraph, that in thirty minutes he stormed a fort 
manned by seven hundred, and captured the entire gar- 
rison, killing five hundred and taking one hundred pris- 
oners, while he sustained a loss of only twenty killed 
and sixty wounded. It is unnecessary to explain that 
the bulk of the slain were colored soldiers. Making 
due allowance for the heat of battle, history can con- 
siderately veil closer scrutiny into the realities wrapped 
in the exaggerated boast of such a victory. 

The Fort Pillow incident, which occurred in the 
spring of 1864, brought upon President Lincoln the 
very serious question of enforcing an order of retalia- 
tion which had been issued on July 30,' 1863, as an an- 
swer to the Confederate joint resolution of May 1. Mr. 
Lincoln's freedom from every trace of passion was 
as conspicuous in this as in all his official acts. In a 
little address at Baltimore, while referring to the rumor 
of the massacre which had just been received, Mr. 
Lincoln said : 

"We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or 
white officer commanding colored soldiers, has been 



352 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

massacred by the rebels when made a prisoner. We 
fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. 
To take the life of one of their prisoners on the assump- 
tion that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty 
that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too 
cruel, a mistake." 

When more authentic information arrived, the mat- 
ter was very earnestly debated by the assembled cab- 
inet; but the discussion only served to bring out in 
stronger light the inherent dangers of either course. 
In this nice balancing of weighty reasons, two influ- 
ences decided the course of the government against 
retaliation. One was that General Grant was about to 
begin his memorable campaign against Richmond, and 
that it would be most impolitic to preface a great battle 
by the tragic spectacle of a military punishment, how- 
ever justifiable. The second was the tender-hearted 
humanity of the ever merciful President. Frederick 
Douglass has related the answer Mr. Lincoln made to 
him in a conversation nearly a year earlier : 

"I shall never forget the benignant expression of his 
face, the tearful look of his eye, and the quiver in his 
voice when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory mea- 
sures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I do not know where 
such a measure would stop.' He said he could not take 
men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done 
by others. If he could get hold of the persons who 
were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold 
blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill 
the innocent for the guilty." 

Amid the sanguinary reports and crowding events 
that held public attention for a year, from the Wil- 
derness to Appomattox, the Fort Pillow affair was for- 
gotten, not only by the cabinet, but by the country. 

The related subjects of emancipation and negro sol- 



THE DRAFT 353 

diers would doubtless have been discussed with much 
more passion and friction, had not public thought 
been largely occupied during the year 1863 by the en- 
actment of the conscription law and the enforcement 
of the draft. In the hard stress of politics and war 
during the years 1861 and 1862, the popular enthusi- 
asm with which the free States responded to the Presi- 
dent's call to put down the rebellion by force of arms 
had become measurably exhausted. The heavy mil- 
itary reverses which attended the failure of McClellan's 
campaign against Richmond, Pope's defeat at the sec- 
ond Bull Run, McClellan's neglect to follow up the 
drawn battle of Antietam with energetic operations, the 
gradual change of early Western victories to a cessa- 
tion of all effort to open the Mississippi, and the scat- 
tering of the Western forces to the spiritless routine 
of repairing and guarding long railroad lines, all oper- 
ated together practically to stop volunteering and en- 
listment by the end of 1862. 

Thus far, the patriotic record was a glorious one. 
Almost one hundred thousand three months' militia 
had shouldered muskets to redress the fall of Fort Sum- 
ter; over half a million three years' volunteers promptly 
enlisted to form the first national army under the laws 
of Congress passed in August, 1861 ; nearly half a 
million more volunteers came forward under the tender 
of the governors of free States and the President's 
call of July, 1862, to repair the failure of McClellan's 
Peninsula campaign. Several minor calls for shorter 
terms of enlistment, aggregating more than forty 
thousand, are here omitted for brevity's sake. Had the 
Western victories continued, had the Mississippi been 
opened, had the Army of the Potomac been more fortu- 
nate, volunteering would doubtless have continued at 
quite or nearly the same rate. But with success de- 



354 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

layed, with campaigns thwarted, with public sentiment 
despondent, armies ceased to fill. An emergency call 
for three hundred thousand nine months' men, issued 
on August 4, 1862, produced a total of only eighty- 
six thousand eight hundred and sixty; and an attempt 
to supply these in some of the States by a draft under 
State laws demonstrated that mere local statutes and 
machinery for that form of military recruitment were 
defective and totally inadequate. 

With the beginning of the third year of the war, 
more energetic measures to fill the armies were seen 
to be necessary; and after very hot and acrimonious 
debate for about a month, Congress, on March 3, 1863, 
passed a national conscription law, under which all 
male citizens between the ages of twenty and forty- 
five were enrolled to constitute the national forces, 
and the President was authorized to call them into ser- 
vice by draft as occasion might require. The law au- 
thorized the appointment of a prov'ost-marshal-gen- 
eral, and under him a provost-marshal, a commissioner, 
and a surgeon, to constitute a board of enrollment in 
each congressional district; who, with necessary depu- 
ties, were required to carry out the law by national 
authority, under the supervision of the provost-mar- 
shal-generalv 

For more than a year past, the Democratic leaders 
in the Northern States had assumed an attitude of vio- 
lent partizanship against the administration, their hos- 
tility taking mainly the form of stubborn opposition to 
the antislavery enactments of Congress and the eman- 
cipation measures of- the President. They charged 
with loud denunciation that he was converting the 
maintenance of the Union into a war for abolition, and 
with this and other clamors had gained considerable 
successes in the autumn congressional elections of 



THE DRAFT 355 

1862, though not enough to break the Republican ma- 
jority in the House of Representatives. General Mc- 
Clellan was a Democrat, and, since his removal from 
command, they proclaimed him a martyr to this policy, 
and were grooming him to be their coming presiden- 
tial candidate. 

The passage of the conscription law afforded them a 
new pretext to assail the administration ; and Demo- 
cratic members of both Houses of Congress denounced 
it with extravagant partizan bitterness as a violation 
of the Constitution, and subversive of popular lib- 
erty. In the mouths of vindictive cross-roads dem- 
agogues, and in the columns of irresponsible news- 
papers that supply the political reading among the more 
reckless elements of city populations, the extravagant 
language of Democratic leaders degenerated in many 
instances into unrestrained abuse and accusationj Yet, 
considering that this was the first conscription iaw ever 
enacted in the United States, considering the multi- 
tude of questions and difficulties attending its appli- 
cation, considering that the necessity of its enforceniL-nt 
was, in the nature of things, unwelcome to the friends 
of the government, and, as naturally, excited all the en- 
mity and cunning of its foes to impede, thwart, and 
evade it, the law was carried out with a remarkably 
small proportion of delay, obstruction, or resulting 
violence. 

Among a considerable number of individual viola- 
tions of the act, in which prompt punishment prevented 
a repetition, only two prominent incidents arose which 
had what may be called a national significance. In 
the State of New York the partial political reaction of 
1862 had caused the election of Horatio Seymour, a 
Democrat, as governor. A man of high character and 
great ability, he, nevertheless, permitted his partizan 



356 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

feeling to warp and color his executive functions to a 
dangerous extent. The spirit of his antagonism is 
shown in a phrase of his fourth-of-July oration : 

"The Democratic organization look upon this ad- 
ministration as hostile to their rights and liberties ; they 
look upon their opponents as men who would do them 
wrong in regard to their most sacred franchises." 

Believing — perhaps honestly — the conscription law 
to be unconstitutional, he endeavored, by protest, argu- 
ment, and administrative non-compliance, to impede 
its execution on the plea of first demanding a Supreme 
Court decision as to its legality. To this President 
Lincoln replied : 

"I cannot consent to suspend the draft in New York, 
as you request, because, among other reasons, time is 
too important. ... I do not object to abide a deci- 
sion of the United States Supreme Court, or of the 
judges thereof, on the constitutionality of the draft 
law. In fact, I should be willing to facilitate the ob- 
taining of it ; but I cannot consent to lose the time while 
it is being obtained. We are contending with an en- 
emy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied 
man he can reach into his ranks, very much as a 
butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No time 
is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an 
army which will soon turn upon our now victorious 
soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be sus- 
tained by recruits as they should be." 

Notwithstanding Governor Seymour's neglect to 
give the enrolling officers any cooperation, preparations 
for the draft went on in New York city without pros- 
pect of serious disturbance, except the incendiary lan- 
guage of low newspapers and handbills. But scarcely 
had the wheel begun to turn, and the drawing com- 
menced, on July 13, when a sudden riot broke out. 



DRAFT RIOTS 357 

First demolishing the enrolling-office, the crowd next 
attacked an adjoining block of stores, which they plun- 
dered and set on fire, refusing to let the firemen put 
out the flames. From this point the excitement and 
disorder spread over the city, which for three days was 
at many points subjected to the uncontrolled fury of 
the mob. Loud threats to destroy the New York 
"Tribune" office, which the inmates as vigorously pre- 
pared to defend, were made. The most savage bru- 
tality was wreaked upon colored people. The fine 
building of the colored Orphan Asylum, where several 
hundred children barely found means of escape, was 
plundered and set on fire. It was notable that for- 
eigners of recent importation were the principal leaders 
and actors in this lawlessness in which two million 
dollars worth of property was destroyed, and several 
hundred persons lost their lives. 

The disturbance came to an end on the night of the 
fourth day, when a small detachment of soldiers met 
a body of rioters, and firing into them, killed thirteen, 
and wounded eighteen more. Governor Seymour gave 
but little help in the disorder, and left a stain on the 
record of his courage by addressing a portion of the 
mob as "my friends." The opportune arrival of na- 
tional troops restored, and thereafter maintained, quiet 
and safety. 

Some temporary disturbance occurred in Boston, but 
was promptly put down, and loud appeals came from 
Philadelphia and Chicago to stop the draft. The final 
effect of the conscription law was not so much to obtain 
recruits for the service, as to stimulate local effort 
throughout the country to promote volunteering, 
whereby the number drafted was either greatly les- 
sened or, in many localities, entirely avoided by filling 
the State quotas. 



358 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The military arrest of Clement L. Vallandigham, a 
Democratic member of Congress from Ohio, for incen- 
diary language denouncing the draft, also grew to an 
important incident. Arrested and tried under the or- 
ders of General Burnside, a military commission found 
him guilty of having violated General Order No. 38, by 
"declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions with the ob- 
ject and purpose of weakening the power of the govern- 
ment in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion" ; 
and sentenced him to military confinement during the 
war. Judge Leavitt of the United States Circuit 
Court denied a writ of habeas corpus in the case. 
President Lincoln regretted the arrest, but felt it im- 
prudent to annul the action of the general and the mil- 
itary tribunal. Conforming to a clause of Burnside's 
order, he modified the sentence by sending Vallandig- 
ham south beyond the Union military lines. The affair 
created a great sensation, and, in a spirit of party pro- 
test, the Ohio Democrats unanimously nominated Val- 
landigham for governor. Vallandigham went to Rich- 
mond, held a conference with the Confederate author- 
ities, and, by way of Bermuda, went to Canada, from 
whence he issued a political address. The Democrats 
of both Ohio and New York took up the political and 
legal discussion with great heat, and sent imposing 
committees to present long addresses to the President 
on the affair. 

Mr. Lincoln made long written replies to both ad- 
dresses, of which only so much needs quoting here as 
concisely states his interpretation of his authority to 
suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus: 

"You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I 
may override all the guaranteed rights of individuals, 
on the plea of conserving the public safety — when 1 
may choose to say the public safety requires it. This 



HABEAS CORPUS 359 

question, divested of the phraseology calculated to 
represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal 
prerogative, is either simply a question who shall de- 
cide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what 
the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or 
invasion. The Constitution contemplates the question 
as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly 
declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, 
when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be 
made from time to time ; and I think the man whom. 
for the time, the people have, under the Constitution. 
made the commander-in-chief of their army and navy, 
is the man who holds the power and bears the respon- 
sibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the 
same people will probably justify him ; if he abuses it, 
he is in their hands, to be dealt with by all the modes 
they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution." 

Forcible and convincing as was this legal analysis, 
a single sympathetic phrase of the President's reply 
had a much greater popular effect : 

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who de- 
serts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator 
who induces him to desert?" 

The term so accurately described the character of 
Vallandigham, and the pointed query so touched the 
hearts of the Union people throughout the land whose 
favorite "soldier boys" had volunteered to fill the Union 
armies, that it rendered powerless the crafty criticism 
of party diatribes. The response of the people of Ohio 
was emphatic. At the October election Vallandigham 
was defeated by more than one hundred thousand 
majority. 

In sustaining the arrest of Vallandigham, President 
Lincoln had acted not only within his constitutional, 
but also strictly within his legal, authority. In the pre- 



360 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ceding March, Congress had passed an act legalizing all 
orders of this character made by the President at any- 
time during the rebellion, and accorded him full indem- 
nity for all searches, seizures, and arrests or imprison- 
ments made under his orders. The act also provided : 

"That, during the present rebellion, the President of 
the United States, whenever in his judgment the pub- 
lic safety may require it, is authorized to suspend the 
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any case, 
throughout the United States or any part thereof." 

About the middle of September, Mr. Lincoln's pro- 
clamation formally put the law in force, to obviate any 
hindering or delaying the prompt execution of the 
draft law. 

Though Vallandigham and the Democrats of his 
type were unable to prevent or even delay the draft, 
they yet managed to enlist the sympathies and secure 
the adhesion of many uneducated and unthinking men 
by means of secret societies, known as "Knights of the 
Golden Circle," "The Order of American Knights," 
"Order of the Star," "Sons of Liberty," and by other 
equally high-sounding names, which they adopted and 
discarded in turn, as one after the other was discovered 
and brought into undesired prominence. The titles 
and grips and passwords of these secret military or- 
ganizations, the turgid eloquence of their meetings, and 
the clandestine drill of their oath-bound members, 
doubtless exercised quite as much fascination on such 
followers as their unlawful object of aiding and abet- 
ting the Southern cause. The number of men thus en- 
listed in the work of inducing desertion among Union 
soldiers, fomenting resistance to the draft, furnishing 
the Confederates with arms, and conspiring to estab- 
lish a Northwestern Confederacy in full accord with 
the South, which formed the ultimate dream of their 



SECRET SOCIETIES 361 

leaders, is hard to determine. Vallandigham, the real 
head of the movement, claimed five hundred thousand, 
and Judge Holt, in an official report, adopted that as 
being- somewhere near the truth, though others counted 
them at a full million. 

The government, cognizant of their existence, and 
able to produce abundant evidence against the ring- 
leaders whenever it chose to do so, wisely paid little 
heed to these dark-lantern proceedings, though, as was 
perhaps natural, military officers commanding the de- 
partments in which they were most numerous were 
inclined to look upon them more seriously; and Gov- 
ernor Morton of Indiana was much disquieted by their 
work in his State. 

Mr. Lincoln's attitude toward them was one of good- 
humored contempt. "Nothing can make me believe 
that one hundred thousand Indiana Democrats are dis- 
loyal," he said ; and maintained that there was more 
folly than crime in their acts. Indeed, though prolific 
enough of oaths and treasonable utterances, these or- 
ganizations were singularly lacking in energy and in- 
itiative. Most of the attempts made against the pub- 
lic peace in the free States and along the northern 
border came, not from resident conspirators, but from 
Southern emissaries and their Canadian sympathizers; 
and even these rarely rose above the level of ordinary 
arson and highway robbery. 

Jacob Thompson, who had been Secretary of the 
Interior under President Buchanan, was the principal 
agent of the Confederate government in Canada, where 
he carried on operations as remarkable for their im- 
practicability as for their malignity. One plan during 
the summer of 1864 contemplated nothing less than 
seizing and holding the three great States of Illinois, 
Indiana, and Ohio, with the aid of disloyal Democrats, 



362 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

whereupon it was supposed Missouri and Kentucky 
would quickly join them and make an end of the war. 
Becoming convinced, when this project fell through, 
that nothing could be expected from Northern Demo- 
crats, he placed his reliance on Canadian sympathizers, 
and turned his attention to liberating the Confederate 
prisoners confined on Johnson's Island in Sandusky 
Bay and at Camp Douglas near Chicago. But both 
these elaborate schemes, which embraced such mag- 
nificent details as capturing the war steamer Michigan 
on Lake Erie, came to nought. Nor did the plans to 
burn St. Louis and New York, and to destroy steam- 
boats on the Mississippi River, to which he also gave 
his sanction, succeed much better. A very few men 
were tried and punished for these and similar crimes, 
despite the voluble protest of the Confederate govern- 
ment; but the injuries he and his agents were able to 
inflict, like the acts of the Knights of the Golden Circle 
on the American side of the border, amounted merely 
to a petty annoyance, and never reached the dignity of 
real menace to the government. 



XXVI 

Burnside — Fredericksburg — A Tangle of Cross-Purposes 
— Hooker Succeeds Burnside — Lincoln to Hooker — 
Ckancellorsville — Lee's Second Invasion — Lincoln's 
Criticisms of Hookers Plans — Hooker Relieved — 
Meade — Gettysburg — Lee's Retreat — Lincoln's Letter 
to Meade — Lincoln's Gettysburg Address — Autumn 
Strategy — The Armies go into Winter Quarters 

IT was not without well-meditated reasons that Mr. 
Lincoln had so long kept McClellan in command of 
the Army of the Potomac. He perfectly understood 
thai general's defects, his want of initiative, his hesita- 
tions, his delays, his never-ending complaints. But he 
had long foreseen the difficulty which would and did 
immediately arise when, on November 5, 1862, he 
removed him from command. Whom should he ap- 
point as McClellan's successor? What officer would 
be willing and competent to play a better part? That 
important question had also long been considered ; sev- 
eral promising generals had been consulted, who, as 
gracefully as they could, shrank from the responsibility 
even before it was formally offered them. 

The President finally appointed General Ambrose 
E. Burnside to the command. He was a West Point 
graduate, thirty-eight years old, of handsome pres- 
ence, brave and generous to a fault, and McClellan's 
intimate friend. He had won a favorable reputation 
in leading the expedition against Roanoke Island and 
the North Carolina coast; and, called to reinforce 
363 



364 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

McClellan after the Peninsula disaster, commanded 
the left wing of the Army of the Potomac at Antietam. 
He was not covetous of the honor now given him. He 
had already twice declined it, and only now accepted 
the command as a duty under the urgent advice of 
members of his staff. His instincts were better than 
the judgment of his friends. A few brief weeks suf- 
ficed to demonstrate what he had told them — that he 
"was not competent to command such a large army." 

The very beginning of his work proved the truth of 
his self-criticism. Rejecting all the plans of campaign 
which were suggested to him, he found himself incapa- 
ble of forming any very plausible or consistent one of 
his own. As a first move he concentrated his army 
opposite the town of Fredericksburg on the lower Rap- 
pahannock, but with such delays that General Lee had 
time to seize and strongly fortify the town and the 
important adjacent heights on the south bank; and 
when Burnside's army crossed on December n, and 
made its main and direct attack on the formidable and 
practically impregnable Confederate intrenchments on 
the thirteenth, a crushing repulse and defeat of the 
Union forces, with a loss of over ten thousand killed 
and wounded, was the quick and direful result. 

It was in a spirit of stubborn determination rather 
than clear, calculating courage that he renewed his 
orders for an attack on the fourteenth; but, dissuaded 
by his division and corps commanders from the rash 
experiment, succeeded without further damage in with- 
drawing his forces on the night of the fifteenth to 
their old camps north of the river. In manly words 
his report of the unfortunate battle gave generous 
praise to his officers and men, and assumed for him- 
self all the responsibility for the attack and its failure. 
But its secondary consequences soon became irreme- 



BURNSIDE 365 

diable. By that gloomy disaster Burnside almost 
completely lost the confidence of his officers and men, 
and rumors soon came to the President that a spirit 
akin to mutiny pervaded the army. When informa- 
tion came that, on the day after Christmas, Burnside 
was preparing for a new campaign, the President 
telegraphed him : 

"I have good reason for saying you must not make 
a general movement of the army without letting me 
know." 

This, naturally, brought Burnside to the President 
for explanation, and, after a frank and full discussion 
between them, Mr. Lincoln, on New Year's day, wrote 
the following letter to General Halleck : 

"General Burnside wishes to cross the Rappahan- 
nock with his army, but his grand division commanders 
all oppose the movement. If in such a difficulty as this 
you do not help, you fail me precisely in the point for 
which I sought your assistance. You know what 
General Burnside's plan is, and it is my wish that you 
go with him to the ground, examine it as far as prac- 
ticable, confer with the officers, getting their judgment 
and ascertaining their temper; in a word, gather all 
the elements for forming a judgment of your own, 
and then tell General Burnside that you do approve, 
or that you do not approve, his plan. Your military 
skill is useless to me if you will not do this." 

Halleck's moral and official courage, however, failed 
the President in this emergency. He declined to give 
his military opinion, and asked to be relieved from 
further duties as general-in-chief. This left Mr. Lin- 
coln no option, and still having need of the advice of 
his general-in-chief on other questions, he indorsed 
on his own letter, "withdrawn because considered harsh 
by General Halleck." The complication, however. 



366 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

continued to grow worse, and the correspondence more 
strained. Burnside declared that the country had lost 
confidence in both the Secretary of War and the gen- 
eral-in-chief ; also, that his own generals were unani- 
mously opposed to again crossing the Rappahannock. 
Halleck, on the contrary, urged another crossing, but 
that it must be made on Burnside's own decision, plan, 
and responsibility. Upon this the President, on Janu- 
ary 8, 1863, again wrote Burnside: 

"I understand General Halleck has sent you a letter 
of which this is a copy. I approve this letter. I de- 
plore the want of concurrence with you in opinion by 
your general officers, but I do not see the remedy. Be 
cautious, and do not understand that the government 
or country is driving you. I do not yet see how I 
could profit by changing the command of the Army of 
the Potomac; and if I did, I should not wish to do it 
by accepting the resignation of your commission." 

Once more Burnside issued orders against which 
his generals protested, and which a storm turned into 
the fruitless and impossible "mud march" before he 
reached the intended crossings of the Rappahannock. 
Finally, on January 23, Burnside presented to the 
President the alternative of either approving an order 
dismissing about a dozen generals, or accepting his 
own resignation, and Mr. Lincoln once more had 
before him the difficult task of finding a new com- 
mander for the Army of the Potomac. On January 
25, 1863, the President relieved Burnside and assigned 
Major-General Joseph Hooker to duty as his successor; 
and in explanation of his action wrote him the follow- 
ing characteristic letter: 

"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the 
Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what ap- 
pear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it 



LIXCOLX TO HOOKER 367 

best for you to know that there are some things in 
regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I 
believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, 
of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics 
with your profession, in which you are right. You 
have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if 
not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, 
which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather 
than harm ; but I think that during General Burnside's 
command of the army you have taken counsel of your 
ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in 
which you did a great wrong to the country, and to 
a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your re- 
cently saying that both the army and the government 
needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but 
in spite of it. that I have given you the command. 
Only those generals who gain successes can set up dic- 
tators. What I now ask of you is military success, 
and I will risk the dictatorship. The government 
will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is 
neither more nor less than it has done and will do for 
all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which 
you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing 
their commander and withholding confidence from 
him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far 
as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, 
if he were alive again, could get any good out of an 
army while such a spirit prevails in it ; and now be- 
ware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with en- 
ergy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us 
victories." 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this letter is 
the evidence it gives how completely the genius of Pres- 
ident Lincoln had by this, the middle of his presidential 



368 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

term, risen to the full height of his great national du- 
ties and responsibilities. From beginning to end it 
speaks the language and breathes the spirit of the great 
ruler, secure in popular confidence and official author- 
ity, equal to the great emergencies that successively 
rose before him. Upon General Hooker its ^courteous 
praise and frank rebuke, its\enerous trust and distinct 
note of fatherly warning, made a profound impression. 
He strove worthily tc redeem his past indiscretions by 
devoting himself with great zeal and energy to im- 
proving the discipline and morale of his army, recalling 
its absentees, and restoring its spirit by increased drill 
and renewed activity. He kept the President well 
informed of what he was doing, and early in April 
submitted a plan of campaign on which Mr. Lincoln 
indorsed, on the eleventh of that month: 

"My opinion is that just now, with the enemy di- 
rectly ahead of us, there is no eligible route for us into 
Richmond; and consequently a question of preference 
between the Rappahannock route and the James River 
route is a contest about nothing. Hence, our prime 
object is the enemy's army in front of us, and is not 
with or about Richmond at all, unless it be incidental 
to the main object." 

Having raised his effective force to about one hun- 
dred and thirty thousand men, and learning that Lee's 
army was weakened by detachments to perhaps half 
that number, Hooker, near the end of the month, pre- 
pared and executed a bold movement which for a while 
was attended with encouraging progress. Sending 
General Sedgwick with three army corps to make a 
strong demonstration and crossing below Fredericks- 
burg, Hooker with his remaining four corps made a 
somewhat long and circuitous march by which he 
crossed both the Rappahannock and the Rapidan above 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 369 

the town without serious opposition, and on the even- 
ing of April 30 had his four porps at Chancellorsville, 
south of the Rappahannock, from whence he could 
advance against the rear of the enemy. But his ad- 
vantage of position was neutralized by the difficulties 
of the ground. He was in the dense and tangled 
forest known as the Wilderness, and the decision and 
energy of his brilliant and successful advance were 
suddenly succeeded by a spirit of hesitation and delay 
in which the evident and acknowledged chances of 
victory were gradually lost. The enemy found time 
to rally from his surprise and astonishment, to gather a 
strong line of defense, and finally, to organize a counter 
flank movement under Stonewall Jackson, which fell 
upon the rear of the Union right and created a panic 
in the Eleventh Corps. Sedgwick's force had crossed 
below and taken Fredericksburg; but the divided Union 
army could not effect a junction; and the fighting from 
May 1 to May 4 finally ended by the withdrawal of 
both sections of the Union army north of the Rappa- 
hannock. The losses suffered by the Union and the 
Confederate forces were about equal, but the prestige of 
another brilliant victory fell to General Lee, seriously 
balanced, however, by the death of Stonewall Jackson, 
who was accidentally killed by the fire of his own 
men. 

In addition to his evident very unusual diminution 
of vigor and will, Hooker had received a personal in- 
jury on the third, which for some hours rendered him 
incapable of command; and he said in his testimony 
before the Committee on the Conduct of the War : 

"When I returned from Chancellorsville I felt that 
I had fought no battle ; in fact. I had more men than 
I could use, and I fought no general battle for the rea- 
son that I could not get my men in position to do so ; 



37o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

probably not more than three or three and a half corps 
on the right were engaged in the fight." 

Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville had not been so 
great a disaster as that of Burnside at Fredericksburg; 
and while his influence was greatly impaired, his use- 
fulness did not immediately cease. The President and 
the Secretary of War still had faith in him. The aver- 
age opinion of his qualities has been tersely expressed 
by one of his critics, who wrote : "As an inferior he 
planned badly and fought well ; as a chief he planned 
well and fought badly." The course of war soon 
changed, so that he was obliged to follow rather than 
permitted to lead the developments of a new campaign. 

The brilliant victories gained by Lee inspired the 
Confederate authorities and leaders with a greatly ex- 
aggerated hope of the ultimate success of the rebellion. 
It was during the summer of 1863 that the Confed- 
erate armies reached, perhaps, their highest numerical 
strength and greatest degree of efficiency. Both the 
long dreamed of possibility of achieving Southern in- 
dependence, and the newly flushed military ardor of 
officers and men, elated by what seemed to them an 
unbroken record of successes on the Virginia battle- 
fields, moved General Lee to the bold hazard of a sec- 
ond invasion of the North. Early in June, Hooker 
gave it as his opinion that Lee intended to move against 
Washington, and asked whether in that case he should 
attack the Confederate rear. To this Lincoln answered 
on the fifth of that month : 

"In case you find Lee coming to the north of the 
Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south 
of it. If he should leave a rear force at Fredericks- 
burg, tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight in 
intrenchments and have you at disadvantage, and so, 
man for man, worst you at that point, while his main 



LINCOLN TO HOOKER 371 

force would in some way be getting an advantage of 
you northward. In one word, I would not take any 
risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox 
jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs 
front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way 
or kick the other." 

Five days later, Hooker, having become convinced 
that a large part of Lee's army was in motion toward 
the Shenandoah valley, proposed the daring plan of 
a quick and direct march to capture Richmond. But 
the President immediately telegraphed him a convinc- 
ing objection : 

"If left to me, I would not go south of the Rappahan- 
nock upon Lee's moving north of it. If you had Rich- 
mond invested to-day, you would not he able to take 
it in twenty days; meanwhile, your communications, 
and with them your army, would be ruined. I think 
Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true objective 
point. If he comes toward the upper Potomac, follow 
on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your 
lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when 
opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him 
and fret him." 

The movement northward of Lee's army, effectually 
masked for some days by frequent cavalry skirmishes, 
now became evident to the Washington authorities. 
On June 14, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker: 

"So far as we can make out here, the enemy have 
Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and Tyler at Mar- 
tinsburg. If they could hold out a few days, could 
you help them? If the head of Lee's army is at Mar- 
tinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between 
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must 
be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?" 

While Lee, without halting, crossed the Potomac 



372 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

above Harper's Ferry, and continued his northward 
march into Maryland and Pennsylvania, Hooker pru- 
dently followed on the "inside track" as Mr. Lincoln 
had suggested, interposing the Union army effectually 
to guard Washington and Baltimore. But at this point 
a long-standing irritation and jealousy between Hooker 
and Halleck became so acute that on the general-in- 
chief's refusing a comparatively minor request, Hooker 
asked to be relieved from command. The President, 
deeming divided counsel at so critical a juncture more 
hazardous than a change of command, took Hooker 
at his word, and appointed General George G. Meade 
as his successor. 

Meade had, since Chancellorsville, been as caustic a 
critic of Hooker as Hooker was of Burnside at and 
after Fredericksburg. But all spirit of insubordina- 
tion vanished in the exciting stress of a pursuing cam- 
paign, and the new and retiring leaders of the Army 
of the Potomac exchanged compliments in General 
Orders with high chivalric courtesy, while the army 
continued its northward march with undiminished 
ardor and unbroken step. When Meade crossed the 
Pennsylvania line, Lee was already far ahead, threat- 
ening Harrisburg. The Confederate invasion spread 
terror and loss among farms and villages, and created 
almost a panic in the great cities. Under the Presi- 
dent's call for one hundred thousand six months' mili- 
tia, six of the adjoining States were sending hurried 
and improvised forces to the banks of the Susquehanna, 
under the command of General Couch. Lee, rinding 
that stream too well guarded, turned his course directly 
east, which, with Meade marching to the north, brought 
the opposing armies into inevitable contact and collision 
at the town of Gettysburg. 

Meade had both expected and carefully prepared 



GETTYSBURG 373 

to receive the attack and fight a defensive battle on the 
line of Pipe Creek. But when, on the afternoon of July 
i, 1863, the advance detachments of each army met and 
engaged in a fierce conflict for the possession of the 
town, Meade, on learning the nature of the fight, and 
the situation of the ground, instantly decided to accept 
it, and ordering forward his whole force, made it the 
principal and most decisive battle-field of the whole 
war. 

The Union troops made a violent and stubborn effort 
to hold the town of Gettysburg ; but the early Confed- 
erate arrivals, taking position in a half-circle on the 
west, north, and east, drove them through and out of it. 
The seeming reverse proved an advantage. Half a 
mile to the south it enabled the Union detachments to 
seize and establish themselves on Cemetery Ridge and 
Hill. This, with several rocky elevations, and a crest 
of boulders making a curve to the east at the northern 
end, was in itself almost a natural fortress, and with the 
intrenchments thrown up by the expert veterans, soon 
became nearly impregnable. Beyond a wide valley 
to the west, and parallel with it, lay Seminary Ridge, 
on which the Confederate army established itself with 
equal rapidity. Lee had also hoped to fight a defensive 
battle; but thus suddenly arrested in his eastward 
march in a hostile country, could not afford to stand 
still and wait. 

On the morning of July 2, both commanding gen- 
erals were in the field. After careful studies and con- 
sultations, Lee ordered an attack on both the extreme 
right and extreme left of the Union position, meeting 
some success in the former, but a complete repulse in 
the latter. That night, Meade's council of war, coin- 
ciding with his own judgment, resolved to stand and 
fight it out; while Lee, against the advice of Long- 



374 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

street, his ablest general, with equal decision deter- 
mined to risk the chance of a final and determined 
attack. 

It was Meade who began the conflict at dawn on the 
morning of July 3, but only long enough to retake 
and hold the intrenchments on his extreme right, 
which he had lost the evening before; then for some 
hours an ominous lull and silence fell over the whole 
battle-field. But these were hours of stern prepara- 
tion. At midday a furious cannonade began from one 
hundred and thirty Confederate guns on Seminary 
Ridge, which was answered with promptness and spirit 
by about seventy Union guns from the crests and 
among the boulders of Cemetery Ridge ; and the deaf- 
ening roar of artillery lasted for about an hour, at the 
end of which time the Union guns ceased firing and 
were allowed to cool, and to be made ready to meet the 
assault that was sure to come. There followed a period 
of waiting almost painful to officers and men, in its in- 
tense expectancy; and then across the broad, undu- 
lating, and highly cultivated valley swept the long 
attacking line of seventeen thousand rebel infantry, 
the very flower of the Confederate army. But it was a 
hopeless charge. Thinned, almost mowed down by the 
grape-shot of the Union batteries and the deadly aim 
of the Union riflemen behind their rocks and intrench- 
ments, the Confederate assault wavered, hesitated, 
struggled on, and finally melted away before the de- 
structive fire. A few rebel battle-flags reached the 
crest, only, however, to fall, and their bearers and sup- 
porters to be made prisoners. The Confederate dream 
of taking Philadelphia and dictating peace and separa- 
tion in Independence Hall was over forever. 

It is doubtful whether Lee immediately realized the 
full measure of his defeat, or Meade the magnitude of 



LEE'S RETREAT 375 

his victory. The terrible losses of the battle of Gettys- 
burg — over three thousand killed, fourteen thousand 
wounded, and five thousand captured or missing of the 
Union army; and twenty-six hundred killed, twelve 
thousand wounded, and five thousand missing of the 
Confederates — largely occupied the thoughts and la- 
bors of both sides during the national holiday which 
followed. It was a surprise to Meade that on the morn- 
ing of July 5 the Confederate army had disappeared, re- 
treating as rapidly as might be to the neighborhood of 
Harper's Ferry. Unable immediately to cross because 
the Potomac was swollen by heavy rains, and Meade 
having followed and arrived in Lee's front on July 10, 
President Lincoln had the liveliest hopes that Meade 
would again attack and capture or destroy the Con- 
federate army. Generous praise for his victory, and 
repeated and urgent suggestions to renew his attack 
and end the rebellion, had gone to Meade from the 
President and General Halleck. But Meade hesitated, 
and his council of war objected; and on the night of 
July 13 Lee recrossed the Potomac in retreat. When 
he heard the news, Mr. Lincoln sat down and wrote a 
letter of criticism and disappointment which reflects 
the intensity of his feeling at the escape of Lee : 

'The case, summarily stated, is this: You fought 
and beat the enemy at Gettysburg, and, of course, to 
say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He re- 
treated, and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly 
pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him till, 
by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had 
at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with 
you, and as many more raw ones within supporting 
distance, all in addition to those who fought with you 
at Gettysburg, while it was not possible that he had 
received a single recruit, and yet you stood and let the 



376 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move 
away at his leisure, without attacking him. . . . 
Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appre- 
ciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's 
escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have 
closed upon him would, in connection with our other 
late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war 
will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely 
attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so 
south of the river, when you can take with you very 
few more than two thirds of the force you then had 
in hand ? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do 
not expect [that] you can now effect much. Your 
golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed im- 
measurably because of it." 

Clearly as Mr. Lincoln had sketched and deeply as 
he felt Meade's fault of omission, so quick was the 
President's spirit of forgiveness, and so thankful was 
he for the measure of success which had been gained, 
that he never signed or sent the letter. 

Two memorable events are forever linked with the 
Gettysburg victory : the surrender of Vicksburg to 
Grant on the same fourth of July, described in the 
next chapter, and the dedication of the Gettysburg 
battle-field as a national cemetery for Union soldiers, 
on November 19, 1863, on which occasion President 
Lincoln crowned that imposing ceremonial with an 
address of such literary force, brevity, and beauty, that 
critics have assigned it a high rank among the world's 
historic orations. He said : 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in lib- 
erty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 



GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 377 

whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate 
a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those 
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. 
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
this. 

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can- 
not consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have 
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or de- 
tract. The world will little note nor long remember 
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did 
here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for 
us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us — that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave 
the last full measure of devotion ; that we here highly 
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom", and that government of the people, by the people, 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Having safely crossed the Potomac, the Confederate 
army continued its retreat without halting to the famil- 
iar camps in central Virginia it had so long and val- 
iantly defended. Meade followed with alert but pru- 
dent vigilance, but did not again find such chances as he 
lost on the fourth of July, or while the swollen waters 
of the Potomac held his enemy as in a trap. During 
the ensuing autumn months there went on between the 
opposing generals an unceasing game of strategy, a 
succession of moves and counter-moves in which the 
opposing commanders handled their great armies with 



378 . ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the same consumate skill with which the expert fenc- 
ing-master uses his foil, but in which neither could 
break through the other's guard. Repeated minor en- 
counters took place which, in other wars, would have 
rated as heavy battles; but the weeks lengthened into 
months without decisive results, and when the opposing 
armies finally went into winter quarters in December, 
1863, they again confronted each other across the 
Rapidan in Virginia, not very far south of where they 
lay in the winter of 1861. 



XXVII 

Buell and Bragg — Perryville — Rosecrans and Murfrees- 
boro — Grant's Vicksburg Experiments — Grant's May 
Battles — Siege and Surrender of Vicksburg — Lincoln 
to Grant — Rosecrans's March to Chattanooga — Battle 
of Chickamauga — Grant at Chattanooga — Battle of 
Chattanooga — Burnside at Knoxzrille — Burnside Re- 
pulses Longstreet 

FROM the Virginia campaigns of 1863 we must re- 
turn to the Western campaigns of the same year, 
or, to be more precise, beginning with the middle of 
1862. When, in July of that year, Halleck was called 
to Washington to become general-in-chief, the princi- 
pal plan he left behind was that Buell, with the bulk of 
the forces which had captured Corinth, should move 
from that place eastward to occupy eastern Tennessee. 
Buell, however, progressed so leisurely that before he 
reached Chattanooga the Confederate General Bragg, 
by a swift northward movement, advanced into eastern 
Kentucky, enacted the farce of appointing a Confed- 
erate governor for that State, and so threatened Louis- 
ville that Buell was compelled abruptly to abandon his 
eastward march and, turning to the north, run a neck- 
and-neck race to save Louisville from rebel occupation. 
Successful in this, Buell immediately turned and, pur- 
suing the now 7 retreating forces of Bragg, brought 
them to bay at Perryville, where, on October 8, was 
fought a considerable battle from which Bragg imme- 
diately retreated out of Kentucky. 

379 



38o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

While on one hand Bragg had suffered defeat, he 
had on the other caused Buell to give up all idea of 
moving into East Tennessee, an object on which the 
President had specially and repeatedly insisted. When 
Halleck specifically ordered Buell to resume and exe- 
cute that plan, Buell urged such objections, and inti- 
mated such unwillingness, that on October 24, 1862, 
he was relieved from command, and General Rosecrans 
was appointed to succeed him. Rosecrans neglected 
the East Tennessee orders as heedlessly as Buell had 
done; but, reorganizing the Army of the Cumberland 
and strengthening his communications, marched against 
Bragg, who had gone into winter quarters at Murfrees- 
boro. The severe engagement of that name, fought on 
December 31, 1862, and the three succeeding days of 
the new year, between forces numbering about forty- 
three thousand on each side, was tactically a drawn 
battle, but its results rendered it an important Union 
victory, compelling Bragg to retreat; though, for rea- 
sons which he never satisfactorily explained, Rose- 
crans failed for six months to follow up his evident 
advantages. 

The transfer of Halleck from the West to Washing- 
ton in the summer of 1862, left Grant in command of 
the district of West Tennessee. But Buell's eastward 
expedition left him so few movable troops that dur- 
ing the summer and most of the autumn he was able to 
accomplish little except to defend his department by 
the repulse of the enemy at Iuka in September, and 
at Corinth early in October, Rosecrans being in local 
command at both places. It was for these successes 
that Rosecrans was chosen to succeed Buell. 

Grant had doubtless given much of his enforced lei- 
sure to studying the great problem of opening the 
Mississippi, a task which was thus left in his own 



VICKSBURG 381 

hands, but for which, as yet, he found neither a theo- 
retical solution, nor possessed an army sufficiently 
strong to begin practical work. Under the most favor- 
able aspects, it was a formidable undertaking. Union 
gunboats had full control of the great river from Cairo 
as far south as Vicksburg; and Farragut's fleet com- 
manded it from New Orleans as far north as Port Hud- 
son. But the intervening link of two hundred miles be- 
tween these places was in as complete possession of the 
Confederates, giving the rebellion uninterrupted access 
to the immense resources in men and supplies of the 
trans-Mississippi country, and effectually barring the 
free navigation of the river. Both the cities named 
were strongly fortified, but Vicksburg, on the east 
bank, by its natural situation on a bluff two hundred 
feet high, rising almost out of the stream, was un- 
assailable from the river front. Farragut had, indeed, 
in midsummer passed up and down before it with little 
damage from its fire; but, in return, his own guns could 
no more do harm to its batteries than they could have 
bombarded a fortress in the clouds. 

When, by the middle of November, 1862, Grant was 
able to reunite sufficient reinforcements, he started 
on a campaign directly southward toward Jackson, the 
capital of Mississippi, and sent Sherman, with an ex- 
pedition from Memphis, down the river to the mouth 
of the Yazoo, hoping to unite these forces against 
Vicksburg. But before Grant reached Grenada his 
railroad communications were cut by a Confederate 
raid, and his great depot of supplies at Holly Springs 
captured and burned, leaving him for two weeks with- 
out other provisions than such as he could gather by 
foraging. The costly lesson proved a valuable experi- 
ence to him, which he soon put to use. Sherman's ex- 
pedition also met disaster. Landing at Milliken's Bend, 



382 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

on the west bank of the Mississippi, he ventured a 
daring storming assault from the east bank of the 
Yazoo at Haines's Bluff, ten miles north of Vicksburg, 
but met a bloody repulse. 

Having abandoned his railroad advance, Grant next 
joined Sherman at Milliken's Bend in January, 1863, 
where also Admiral Porter, with a river squadron of 
seventy vessels, eleven of them ironclads, was added 
to his force. For the next three months Grant kept 
his large army and flotilla busy with four different ex- 
periments to gain a practicable advance toward Vicks- 
burg, until his fifth highly novel and, to other minds, 
seemingly reckless and impossible plan secured him a 
brilliant success and results of immense military advan- 
tage. One experiment was to cut a canal across the 
tongue of land opposite Vicksburg, through which the 
flotilla might pass out of range of the Vicksburg guns. 
A second was to force the gunboats and transports up 
the tortuous and swampy Yazoo to find a landing far 
north of Haines's Bluff. A third was for the flotilla to 
enter through Yazoo Pass and Cold Water River, two 
hundred miles above, and descend the Yazoo to a hoped- 
for landing. Still a fourth project was to cut a canal 
into Lake Providence west of the Mississippi, seventy 
miles above, find a practicable waterway through two 
hundred miles of bayous and rivers, and establish com- 
munication with Banks and Farragut, who were en- 
gaged in an effort to capture Port Hudson. 

The time, the patience, the infinite labor, and enor- 
mous expense of these several projects were utterly 
wasted. Early in April, Grant began an entirely new 
plan, which was opposed by all his ablest generals, and, 
tested by the accepted rules of military -science, looked 
like a headlong venture of rash desperation. During 
the month of April he caused Admiral Porter to prepare 



VICKSBURG 383 

fifteen or twenty vessels — ironclads, steam transports, 
and provision barges — and run them boldly by night 
past the Vicksburg and, later, past the Grand Gulf bat- 
teries, which the admiral happily accomplished with 
very little loss. Meanwhile, the general, by a very cir- 
cuitous route of seventy miles, marched an army of 
thirty-five thousand down the west bank of the Missis- 
sippi, and, with Porter's vessels and transports, crossed 
them to the east side of the river at Bruinsburg. From 
this point, with an improvised train of country vehicles 
to carry his ammunition, and living meanwhile entirely 
upon the country, as he had learned to do in his bafned 
Grenada expedition, he made one of the most rapid and 
brilliant campaigns in military history. In the first 
twenty days of May he marched one hundred and 
eighty miles, and fought five winning battles — respec- 
tively Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion's 
Hill, and Big Black River — in each of which he brought 
his practically united force against the enemy's sepa- 
rated detachments, capturing altogether eighty-eight 
guns and over six thousand prisoners, and shutting up 
the Confederate General Pemberton in Vicksburg. By 
a rigorous siege of six weeks he then compelled his an- 
tagonist to surrender the strongly fortified city with 
one hundred and seventy-two cannon, and his army of 
nearly thirty thousand men. On the fourth of July, 
1863, the day after Meade's crushing defeat of Lee at 
Gettysburg, the surrender took place, citizens and Con- 
federate soldiers doubtless rejoicing that the old na- 
tional holiday gave them escape from their caves and 
bomb-proofs, and full Yankee rations to still their long- 
endured hunger. 

The splendid victory of Grant brought about a quick 
and important echo. About the time that the Union 
army closed around Vicksburg, General Banks, on the 



384 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

lower Mississippi, began a close investment and siege 
of Port Hudson, which he pushed with determined 
tenacity. When the rebel garrison heard the artillery 
salutes which were fired by order of Banks to celebrate 
the surrender of Vicksburg, and the rebel commander 
was informed of Pemberton's disaster, he also gave up 
the defense, and on July 9 surrendered Port Hudson 
with six thousand prisoners and fifty-one guns. 

Great national rejoicing followed this double success 
of the Union arms on the Mississippi, which, added to 
Gettysburg, formed the turning tide in the war of the 
rebellion; and no one was more elated over these 
Western victories, which fully restored the free naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi, than President Lincoln. Like 
that of the whole country, his patience had been severely 
tried by the long and ineffectual experiments of Grant. 
But from first to last Mr. Lincoln had given him firm 
and undeviating confidence and support. He not only 
gave the general quick promotion, but crowned the 
official reward with the following generous letter : 

"My dear General : I do not remember that you 
and I ever met personally. I write this now as a 
grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable 
service you have done the country. I wish to say a 
word further. When you first reached the vicinity of 
Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally 
did — march the troops across the neck, run the bat- 
teries with the transports, and thus go below ; and I 
never had any faith, except a general hope that you 
knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition 
and the like could succeed. When you got below and 
took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought 
you should go down the river and join General Banks, 
and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, 
I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the 



MARCH TO CHATTANOOGA 385 

personal acknowledgment that you were right and I 
was wrong." 

It has already been mentioned that General Rose- 
crans, after winning the battle of Murfreesboro at the 
beginning of 1863, remained inactive at that place 
nearly six months, though, of course, constantly busy 
recruiting his army, gathering supplies, and warding 
off several troublesome Confederate cavalry raids. 
The defeated General Bragg retreated only to Shelby- 
ville, ten miles south of the battle-field he had been 
obliged to give up, and the military frontier thus 
divided Tennessee between the contestants. Against 
repeated prompting and urging from Washington, 
Rosecrans continued to find real or imaginary excuses 
for delay until midsummer, when, as if suddenly awak- 
ing from a long lethargy, he made a bold advance and, 
by a nine days' campaign of skilful strategy, forced 
Bragg into a retreat that stopped only at Chattanooga, 
south of the Tennessee River, which, with the sur- 
rounding mountains, made it the strategical center and 
military key to the heart of Georgia and the South. 
This march of Rosecrans, ending the day before the 
Vicksburg surrender, again gave the Union forces full 
possession of middle Tennessee down to its southern 
boundary. 

The march completed, and the enemy thus success- 
fully manceuvered out of the State, Rosecrans once 
more came to a halt, and made no further movement 
for six weeks. The President and General Halleck 
were already out of patience with Rosecrans for his 
long previous delay. Bragg's retreat to Chattanooga 
was such a gratifying and encouraging supplement to 
the victories of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, that they 
felt the Confederate army should not be allowed to rest, 
recruit, and fortify the important gateway to the heart 



3^6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of the Southern Confederacy, and early in August 
sent Rosecrans peremptory orders to advance. This 
direction seemed the more opportune and necessary, 
since Burnside had organized a special Union force in 
eastern Kentucky, and was about starting on a direct 
campaign into East Tennessee. 

Finally, obeying this explicit injunction, Rosecrans 
took the initiative in the middle of August by a vigor- 
ous southward movement. Threatening Chattanooga 
from the north, he marched instead around the left 
flank of Bragg's army, boldly crossing the Cumberland 
Mountains, the Tennessee River, and two mountain 
ranges beyond. Bragg, seriously alarmed lest Rose- 
crans should seize the railroad communications behind 
him, hastily evacuated Chattanooga, but not with the 
intention of flight, as Rosecrans erroneously believed 
and reported. When, on September 9, the left of Rose- 
crans's army marched into Chattanooga without firing 
a shot, the Union detachments were so widely scattered 
in separating mountain valleys, in pursuit of Bragg's 
imaginary retreat, that Bragg believed he saw his 
chance to crush them in detail before they could unite. 

With this resolve, Bragg turned upon his antago- 
nist, but his effort at quick concentration was delayed 
by the natural difficulties of the ground. By Septem- 
ber 19, both armies were well gathered on opposite 
sides of Chickamauga Creek, eight miles southeast of 
Chattanooga; each commander being as yet, however, 
little informed of the other's position and strength. 
Bragg had over seventy-one thousand men ; Rosecrans, 
fifty-seven thousand. The conflict was finally begun, 
rather by accident than design, and on that day and the 
twentieth was fought the battle of Chickamauga, one of 
the severest encounters of the whole war. Developing 
itself without clear knowledge on either side, it became 



CHICKAMAUGA 387 

a moving conflict, Bragg constantly extending his at- 
tack toward his right, and Rosecrans meeting the onset 
with prompt shifting toward his left. 

In this changing contest Rosecrans's army underwent 
an alarming crisis on the second day of the battle. A 
mistake or miscarriage of orders opened a gap of two 
brigades in his line, which the enemy quickly found, 
and through which the Confederate battalions rushed 
with an energy that swept away the whole Union right 
in a disorderly retreat. Rosecrans himself was caught 
in the panic, and, believing the day irretrievably lost, 
hastened back to Chattanooga to report the disaster 
and collect what he might of his flying army. The 
hopeless prospect, however, soon changed. Gen- 
eral Thomas, second in command, and originally in 
charge of the center, had been sent by Rosecrans to the 
extreme left, and had, while the right was giving way, 
successfully repulsed the enemy in his front. He had 
been so fortunate as to secure a strong position on the 
head of a ridge, around which he gathered such rem- 
nants of the beaten detachments as he could collect, 
amounting to about half the Union army, and here, 
from two o'clock in the afternoon until dark, he held 
his semicircular line against repeated assaults of the 
enemy, with a heroic valor that earned him the sobri- 
quet of "The Rock of Chickamauga." At night, 
Thomas retired, under orders, to Rossville. half way to 
Chattanooga. 

The President was of course greatly disappointed 
when Rosecrans telegraphed that he had met a seri- 
ous disaster, but this disappointment was mitigated 
by the quickly following news of the magnificent de- 
fense, and the successful stand made by General 
Thomas at the close of the battle. Mr. Lincoln imme- 
diately wrote in a note to Halleck: 



388 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"I think it very important for General Rosecrans to 
hold his position at or about Chattanooga, because, if 
held, from that place to Cleveland, both inclusive, it 
keeps all Tennessee clear of the enemy, and also breaks 
one of his most important railroad lines. . . . 
If he can only maintain this position, without more, this 
rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, 
as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals." 

And to Rosecrans he telegraphed directly, bidding 
him be of good cheer, and adding: "We shall do our 
utmost to assist you." To this end the administration 
took instant and energetic measures. On the night 
of September 23, the President, General Halleck, sev- 
eral members of the cabinet, and leading army and rail- 
road officials met in an improvised council at the War 
Department, and issued emergency orders under which 
two army corps from the Army of the Potomac, num- 
bering twenty thousand men in all, with their arms 
and equipments ready for the field, the whole under 
command of General Hooker, were transported from 
their camps on the Rapidan by railway to Nashville and 
the Tennessee River in the next eight days. Burnside, 
who had arrived at Knoxville early in September, was 
urged by repeated messages to join Rosecrans, and 
other reinforcements were already on the way from 
Memphis and Vicksburg. 

All this help, however, was not instantly available. 
Before it could arrive Rosecrans felt obliged to draw 
together within the fortifications of Chattanooga, 
while Bragg quickly closed about him, and, by practi- 
cally blockading Rosecrans's river communication, 
placed him in a state of siege. In a few weeks the lim- 
ited supplies brought the Union army face to face with 
famine. It having become evident that Rosecrans was 
incapable of extricating it from its peril, he was re- 



BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA 389 

lieved and the command given to Thomas,, while the 
three western departments were consolidated under 
General Grant, and he was ordered personally to pro- 
ceed to Chattanooga, which place he reached on Oc- 
tober 22. 

Before his arrival, General W. F. Smith had devised 
and prepared an ingenious plan to regain control of 
river communication. Under the orders of Grant, 
Smith successfully executed it, and # full rations soon 
restored vigor and confidence to the Union troops. 
The considerable reinforcements under Hooker and 
Sherman coming up, put the besieging enemy on the 
defensive, and active preparations were begun, which 
resulted in the famous battle and overwhelming Union 
victory of Chattanooga on November 23, 24, and 25, 
1863. 

The city of Chattanooga lies on the southeastern 
bank of the Tennessee River. Back of the city, Chat- 
tanooga valley forms a level plain about two miles in 
width to Missionary Ridge, a narrow mountain range 
five hundred feet high, generally parallel to the course 
of the Tennessee, extending far to the southwest. The 
Confederates had fortified the upper end of Missionary 
Ridge to a length of five to seven miles opposite the 
city, lining its long crest with about thirty guns, am- 
ply supported by infantry. This formidable barrier 
was still further strengthened by two lines of rifle-pits, 
one at the base of Missionary Ridge next to the city, 
and another with advanced pickets still nearer Chat- 
tanooga. Northward, the enemy strongly held the 
end of Missionary Ridge where the railroad tunnel 
passes through it; southward, they held the yet 
stronger point of Lookout Mountain, whose rocky base 
turns the course of the Tennessee River in a short bend 
to the north. 



390 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Grant's plan in rough outline was, that Sherman, 
with the Army of the Tennessee, should storm the 
northern end of Missionary Ridge at the railroad tun- 
nel; Hooker, stationed at Wauhatchie, thirteen miles 
to the southwest with his two corps from the Army 
of the Potomac, should advance toward the city, 
storming the point of Lookout Mountain on his way; 
and Thomas, in the city, attack the direct front of 
Missionary Ridge. The actual beginning slightly va- 
ried this program* with a change of corps and divisions, 
but the detail is not worth noting. 

Beginning on the night of November 23, Sherman 
crossed his command over the Tennessee, and on the 
afternoon of the twenty-fourth gained the northern 
end of Missionary Ridge, driving the enemy before 
him as far as the railroad tunnel. Here, however, he 
found a deep gap in the ridge, previously unknown to 
him, which barred his further progress. That same 
afternoon Hooker's troops worked their way through 
mist and fog up the rugged sides of Lookout Mountain, 
winning the brilliant success which has become famous 
as the "battle above the clouds." That same afternoon, 
also, two divisions of the center, under the eyes of 
Grant and Thomas, pushed forward the Union line 
about a mile, seizing and fortifying a hill called Or- 
chard Knob, capturing Bragg's first line of rifle-pits 
and several hundred prisoners. 

So far, everything had occurred to inspirit the Union 
troops and discourage the enemy. But the main in- 
cident was yet to come, on the afternoon of November 
25. All the forenoon of that day Grant waited eagerly 
to see Sherman making progress along the north end 
of Missionary Ridge, not knowing that he had met 
an impassable valley. Grant's patience was equally 
tried at hearing no news from Hooker, though that 



BATTLE OF CHATTANOOGA 391 

general had successfully reached Missionary Ridge, 
and was ascending the gap near Rossville. 

At three o'clock in the afternoon Grant at length 
gave Thomas the order to advance. Eleven Union 
brigades rushed forward with orders to take the en- 
emy's rifle-pits at the base of Missionary Ridge, and 
then halt to re-form. But such was the ease of this 
first capture, such the eagerness of the men who had 
been waiting all day for the moment of action, that, 
after but a slight pause, without orders, and moved 
by a common impulse, they swept on and up the steep 
and rocky face of Missionary Ridge, heedless of the 
enemy's fire from rifle and cannon at the top, until in 
fifty-five minutes after leaving their positions they 
almost simultaneously broke over the crest of the ridge 
in six different places, capturing the batteries and mak- 
ing prisoners of the supporting infantry, who. sur- 
prised and bewildered by the daring escalade, made 
little or no further resistance. Bragg's official report 
soundly berates the conduct of his men, apparently for- 
getting the heavy loss they had inflicted on their as- 
sailants, but regardless of which the Union veterans 
mounted to victory in an almost miraculous exaltation 
of patriotic heroism. 

Bragg's Confederate army was not only beaten, but 
hopelessly demoralized by the fiery Union assault, and 
fled in panic and retreat. Grant kept up a vigorous 
pursuit to a distance of twenty miles, which he ceased 
in order to send an immediate strong reinforcement 
under Sherman to relieve Burnside, besieged by the 
Confederate General Longstreet at Knoxville. But 
before this help arrived, Burnside had repulsed Long- 
street, who, promptly informed of the Chattanooga 
disaster, retreated in the direction of Virginia. Not 
being pursued, however, this general again wintered 



392 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in East Tennessee ; and for the same reason, the beaten 
army of Bragg halted in its retreat from Missionary- 
Ridge at Dalton, where it also went into winter quar- 
ters. The battle of Chattanooga had opened the great 
central gateway to the south, but the rebel army, still 
determined and formidable, yet lay in its path, only 
twenty-eight miles away. 



XXVIII 

Grant Lieutenant-General — Interview with Lincoln — 
Grant Visits Sherman — Plan of Campaigns — Lincoln 
to Grant — From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor — The 
Move to City Point — Siege of Petersburg — Early Men- 
aces Washington — Lincoln under Fire — Sheridan in 
the Shenandoah Valley 

THE army rank of lieutenant-general had, before 
the Civil War, been conferred only twice on 
American commanders ; on Washington, for service 
in the War of Independence, and on Scott, for his con- 
quest of Mexico. As a reward for the victories of 
Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, Congress 
passed, and the President signed in February, 1864, an 
act to revive that grade. Calling Grant to Washington, 
the President met him for the first time at a public re- 
ception at the Executive Mansion on March 8, when 
the famous general was received with all the manifesta- 
tions of interest and enthusiasm possible in a social 
state ceremonial. On the following day, at one o'clock, 
the general's formal investiture with his new rank and 
authority took place in the presence of Mr. Lincoln, 
the cabinet, and a few other officials. 

"General Grant," said the President, "the nation's 
appreciation of what you have done, and its reliance 
upon you for what remains to do in the existing great 
struggle, are now presented, with this commission con- 
stituting you Lieutenant-General in the Army of the 
United States. With this high honor devolves upon 

393 



394 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

you, also, a corresponding responsibility. As the coun- 
try herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you. 
I scarcely need to add that with what I here speak for 
the nation, goes my own hearty personal concurrence." 

General Grant's reply was modest and also very 
brief : 

"Mr. President, I accept this commission with grati- 
tude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the 
noble armies that have fought on so many fields for our 
common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not 
to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight 
of the responsibilities now devolving on me; and 
I know that if they are met, it will be due to those 
armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence 
which leads both nations and men." 

In the informal conversation which followed, Gen- 
eral Grant inquired what special service was expected 
of him ; to which the President replied that the country 
wanted him to take Richmond ; and being asked if he 
could do so, replied that he could if he had the troops, 
which he was assured would be furnished him. On 
the following day, Grant went to the Army of the Po- 
tomac, where Meade received him with frank courtesy, 
generously suggesting that he was ready to yield the 
command to any one Grant might prefer. Grant, how- 
ever, informed Meade that he desired to make no 
change; and, returning to Washington, started west 
without a moment's loss of time. On March 12, 1864, 
formal orders of the War Department placed Grant 
in command of all the armies of the United States, 
while Halleck, relieved from that duty, was retained 
at Washington as the President's chief of staff. 

Grant frankly confesses in his "Memoirs" that when 
he started east it was with a firm determination to 
accept no appointment requiring him to leave the West ; 



PLAN OF CAMPAIGNS 395 

but "when I got to Washington and saw the situation, 
it was plain that here was the point for the command- 
ing general to be." His short visit had removed sev- 
eral false impressions, and future experience was to 
cure him of many more. 

When Grant again met Sherman in the West, he out- 
lined to that general, who had become his most intimate 
and trusted brother officer, the very simple and definite 
military policy which was to be followed during the year 
1864. There were to be but two leading campaigns. 
Sherman, starting from Chattanooga, full master of his 
own movements, was to lead the combined western 
forces against the Confederate army under Johnston, 
the successor of Bragg. Grant would personally 'con- 
duct the campaign in the East against Richmond, or 
rather against the rebel army under Lee. Meade would 
be left in immediate command of the Army of the Po- 
tomac, to execute the personal daily directions of Grant. 
The two Confederate armies were eight hundred miles 
apart, and should either give way, it was to be followed 
without halt or delay to battle or surrender, to prevent 
its junction with the other. Scattered as a large por- 
tion of the Union forces were in garrisons and detach- 
ments at widely separated points, there were, of course, 
many details to be arranged, and a few expeditions 
already in progress; but these were of minor impor- 
tance, and for contributory, rather than main objects, 
and need not here be described. 

Returning promptly to Washington, Grant estab- 
lished his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, 
at Culpepper, and for about a month actively pushed 
his military preparations. He seems at first to have 
been impressed with a dread that the President might 
wish to influence or control his plans. But the few in- 
terviews between them removed the suspicion which 



396 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

reckless newspaper accusation had raised ; and all doubt 
on this point vanished, when, on the last day of April, 
Mr. Lincoln sent him the following explicit letter : 

"Not expecting to see you again before the spring 
campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my en- 
tire satisfaction with what you have done up to this 
time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of 
your plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are 
vigilant and self-reliant ; and, pleased with this, I wish 
not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. 
While I am very anxious that any great disaster or 
capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, 
I know these points are less likely to escape your atten- 
tion than they would be mine. If there is anything 
wanting which is within my power to give, do not 
fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army 
and a just cause, may God sustain you." 

Grant's immediate reply confessed the groundless- 
ness of his apprehensions : 

"From my first entrance into the volunteer service of 
the country to the present clay, I have never had cause 
of complaint — have never expressed or implied a com- 
plaint against the administration, or the Secretary of 
War, for throwing any embarrassment in the way of 
my vigorously prosecuting what appeared to me my 
duty. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in 
command of all the armies, and in view of the great 
responsibility and importance of success, I have been 
astonished at the readiness with which everything 
asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation 
being asked. Should my success be less than I desire 
and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with 
you." 

The Union army under Grant, one hundred and 
twenty-two thousand strong, on April 30, was en- 



THE OPPOSING ARMIES 397 

camped north of the Rapidan River. The Confederate 
army under Lee, numbering sixty-two thousand, lay 
south of that stream. Nearly three years before, these 
opposing armies had fought their first battle of Bull 
Run, only a comparatively short distance north of 
where they now confronted each other. Campaign and 
battle between them had surged far to the north and to 
the south, but neither could as yet claim over the other 
any considerable gain of ground or of final advantage 
in the conflict. Broadly speaking, relative advance and 
retreat, as well as relative loss and gain of battle-fields 
substantially balanced each other. Severe as had been 
their struggles in the past, a more arduous trial of 
strength was before them. Grant had two to one in 
numbers; Lee the advantage of a defensive campaign. 
He could retire toward cumulative reserves, and into 
prepared fortifications; knew almost by heart every 
road, hill, and forest of Virginia ; had for his friendly 
scout every white inhabitant. Perhaps his greatest 
element of strength lay in the conscious pride of the 
Confederate army that through all fluctuations of suc- 
cess and failure, it had for three years effectually 
barred the way of the Army of the Potomac to Rich- 
mond. But to offset this there now menaced it what 
was before absent in every encounter, the grim, un- 
flinching will of the new Union commander. 

General Grant devised no plan of complicated strat- 
egy for the problem before him, but proposed to solve 
it by plain, hard, persistent fighting. He would en- 
deavor to crush the army of Lee before it could reach 
Richmond or unite with the army of Johnston; or, fail- 
ing in that, he would shut it up in that stronghold and 
reduce it by a siege. With this in view, he instructed 
Meade at the very outset : "Lee's army will be your 
objective point. Where Lee goes, there you will go, 



398 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

also." Everything being ready, on the night of May 4, 
Meade threw five bridges across the Rapidan, and be- 
fore the following night the whole Union army, with 
its trains, was across the stream moving southward 
by the left flank, past the right flank of the Confed- 
erates. 

Sudden as was the advance, it did not escape the vig- 
ilant observation of Lee, who instantly threw his force 
against the flanks of the Union columns, and for two 
days there raged in that difficult, broken, and tangled 
region known as the Wilderness, a furious battle of 
detachments along a line five miles in length. Thick- 
ets, swamps, and ravines, rendered intelligent direction 
and concerted manceuvering impossible, and furious 
and bloody as was the conflict, its results were inde- 
cisive. No enemy appearing on the seventh, Grant 
boldly started to Spottsylvania Court House, only, how- 
ever, to find the Confederates ahead of him; and on 
the eighth and ninth these turned their position, al- 
ready strong by nature, into an impregnable intrenched 
camp. Grant assaulted their works on the tenth, 
fiercely, but unsuccessfully. There followed one day 
of inactivity, during which Grant wrote his report, 
only claiming that after six days of hard fighting and 
heavy losses "the result up to this time is much in our 
favor"; but expressing, in the phrase which immedi- 
ately became celebrated, his firm resolution to "fight 
it out on this line if it takes all summer." 

On May 12, 1864, Grant ordered a yet more deter- 
mined attack, in which, with fearful carnage on both 
sides, the Union forces finally stormed the earthworks 
which have become known as the "bloody angle." But 
finding that other and more formidable intrenchments 
still resisted his entrance to the Confederate camp, 
Grant once more moved by the left flank past his enemy 



COLD HARBOR 399 

toward Richmond. Lee followed with equal swiftness 
along the interior lines. Days passed in an intermit- 
ting, and about equally matched contest of strategy and 
fighting. The difference was that Grant was always 
advancing and Lee always retiring. On May 26, Grant 
reported to Washington : 

"Lee's army is really whipped. The prisoners we 
now take show it, and the action of his army shows it 
unmistakably. A battle with them outside of intrench- 
ments cannot be had. Our men feel that they have 
gained the morale over the enemy, and attack him with 
confidence. I may be mistaken, but I feel that our 
success over Lee's army is already assured." 

That same night, Grant's advance crossed the Pamun- 
key River at Hanover Town, and during another week, 
with a succession of marching, flanking, and fighting, 
Grant pushed the Union army forward to Cold Harbor. 
Here Lee's intrenched army was again between him 
and Richmond, and on June 3, Grant ordered another 
determined attack in front, to break through that con- 
stantly resisting barrier. But a disastrous repulse was 
the consequence. Its effect upon the campaign is best 
given in Grant's own letter, written to Washington on 
June 5 : 

"My idea from the start has been to beat Lee's army, 
if possible, north of Richmond ; then, after destroying 
his lines of communication on the north side of the 
James River, to transfer the army to the south side and 
besiege Lee in Richmond, or follow him south if he 
should retreat. I now find, after over thirty days of 
trial, the enemy deems it of the first importance to run 
no risks with the armies they now have. They act 
purely on the defensive behind breastworks, or fee- 
bly on the offensive immediately in front of them, and 
where, in case of repulse, they can instantly retire be- 



4 oo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hind them. Without a greater sacrifice of human life 
than I am willing to make, all cannot be accomplished 
that I had designed outside of the city." 

During the week succeeding the severe repulse at 
Cold Harbor, which closed what may be summed up 
as Grant's campaign against Richmond, he made his 
preparations to enter upon the second element of his 
general plan, which may be most distinctively denom- 
inated the siege of Petersburg, though, in fuller phrase- 
ology, it might be called the siege of Petersburg and 
Richmond combined. But the amplification is not 
essential ; for though the operation and the siege- works 
embraced both cities, Petersburg was the vital and vul- 
nerable point. When Petersburg fell, Richmond fell 
of necessity. The reason was, that Lee's army, in- 
closed within the combined fortifications, could only be 
fed by the use of three railroads centering at Peters- 
burg; one from the southeast, one from the south, and 
one with general access from the southwest. Between 
these, two plank roads added a partial means of supply. 
Thus far, Grant's active campaign, though failing to 
destroy Lee's army, had nevertheless driven it into 
Richmond, and obviously his next step was either to 
dislodge it, or compel it to surrender. 

Cold Harbor was about ten miles from Richmond, 
and that city was inclosed on the Washington side by 
two circles of fortifications devised with the best en- 
gineering skill. On June 13, Grant threw forward an 
army corps across the Chickahominy, deceiving Lee into 
the belief that he was making a real direct advance 
upon the city; and so skilfully concealed his intention 
that by midnight of the sixteenth he had moved the 
whole Union army with its artillery and trains about 
twenty miles directly south and across the James River, 
on a pontoon bridge over two thousand feet long, to 



SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 401 

City Point. General Butler, with an expedition from 
Fortress Monroe, moving early in May, had been or- 
dered to capture Petersburg; and though he failed in 
this, he had nevertheless seized and held City Point, 
and Grant thus effected an immediate junction with 
Butler's force of thirty-two thousand. Butler's second 
attempt to seize Petersburg while Grant was marching 
to join him also failed, and Grant, unwilling to make 
any needless sacrifice, now limited his operations to the 
processes of a regular siege. 

This involved a complete change of method. The 
campaign against Richmond, from the crossing of the 
Rapidan and battle of the Wilderness, to Cold Harbor, 
and the change of base to City Point, occupied a 
period of about six weeks of almost constant swift 
marching and hard fighting. The siege of Petersburg 
was destined to involve more than nine months of min- 
gled engineering and fighting. The Confederate army 
forming the combined garrisons of Richmond and 
Petersburg numbered about seventy thousand. The 
army under Grant, though in its six weeks' campaign it 
had lost over sixty thousand in killed, wounded, and 
missing, was again raised by the reinforcements sent to 
it, and by its junction with Butler, to a total of about 
one hundred and fifty thousand. With this superiority 
of numbers, Grant pursued the policy of alternately 
threatening the defenses of Lee, sometimes south, some- 
times north of the James River, and at every favorable 
opportunity pushing his siege-works westward in order 
to gradually gain and command the three railroads and 
two plank roads that brought the bulk of absolutely 
necessary food and supplies to the Confederate armies 
and the inhabitants of Petersburg and Richmond. It 
is estimated that this gradual westward extension of 
Grant's lines, redoubts, and trenches, when added to 



4Q2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

those threatening- Richmond and Petersburg on the 
east, finally reached a total development of about forty 
miles. The catastrophe came when Lee's army grew 
insufficient to man his defensive line along- this entire 
length, and Grant, finding the weakened places, even- 
tually broke through it, compelling the Confederate 
general and army to evacuate and abandon both cities 
and seek safety in flight. 

The central military drama, the first two distinctive 
acts of which are outlined above, had during this long 
period a running accompaniment of constant under- 
plot and shifting and exciting episodes. The Shenan- 
doah River, rising northwest of Richmond, but flowing 
in a general northeast course to join the Potomac at 
Harper's Ferry, gives its name to a valley twenty to 
thirty miles wide, highly fertile and cultivated, and 
having throughout its length a fine turnpike, which in 
ante-railroad days was an active commercial highway 
between North and South. Bordered on the west by 
the rugged Alleghany Mountains, and on the east by 
the single outlying range called the Blue Ridge, it 
formed a protected military lane or avenue, having 
vital relation to the strategy of campaigns on the open 
Atlantic slopes of central Virginia. The Shenandoah 
valley had thus played a not unimportant part in almost 
every military operation of the war, from the first battle 
of Bull Run to the final defense of Richmond. 

The plans of General Grant did not neglect so 
essential a feature of his task. While he was fighting 
his way toward the Confederate capital, his instructions 
contemplated the possession and occupation of the 
Shenandoah valley as part of the system which should 
isolate and eventually besiege Richmond. But this part 
of his plan underwent many fluctuations. He had 
scarcely reached City Point when he became aware 



EARLY'S RAID 403 

that General Lee, equally alive to the advantages of 
the Shenandoah valley, had dispatched General Early 
with seventeen thousand men on a flying expedition 
up that convenient natural sally-port, which was for the 
moment undefended. 

Early made such speed that he crossed the Poto- 
mac during the first week of July, made a devastating 
raid through Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, 
threatened Baltimore, and turning sharply to the south, 
was, on the eleventh of the month, actually at the out- 
skirts of Washington city, meditating its assault and 
capture. Only the opportune arrival of the Sixth Army 
Corps under General Wright, on the afternoon of that 
day, sent hurriedly by Grant from City Point, saved 
the Federal capital from occupation and perhaps de- 
struction by the enemy. 

Certain writers have represented the government as 
panic-stricken during the two days that this menace 
lasted ; but neither Mr. Lincoln, nor Secretary Stanton, 
nor General Halleck, whom it has been even more the 
fashion to abuse, lacked coolness ■ or energy in the 
emergency. Indeed, the President's personal uncon- 
cern was such as to give his associates much uneasiness. 
On the tenth, he rode out as was his usual custom dur- 
ing the summer months, to spend the night at the 
Soldiers' Home, in the suburbs : but Secretary Stanton, 
learning that Early was advancing in heavy force, sent 
after him to compel his return to the city; and twice 
afterward, intent on watching the fighting which took 
place near Fort Stevens, he exposed his tall form to 
the gaze and bullets of the enemy in a manner to call 
forth earnest remonstrance from those near him. 

The succeeding military events in the Shenandoah 
valley must here be summed up in the brief statement 
that General Sheridan, being placed in command of the 



404 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Middle Military Division and given an army of thirty 
or forty thousand men, finally drove back the Con- 
federate detachments upon Richmond, in a series of 
brilliant victories, and so devastated the southern end 
of the valley as to render it untenable for either army ; 
and by the destruction of the James River Canal and 
the Virginia Central Railroad, succeeded in practically 
carrying out Grant's intention of effectually closing 
the avenue of supplies to Richmond from the northwest. 



XXIX 

Shermans Meridian Expedition — Capture of Atlanta — 
Hood Supersedes Johnston — Hood's Invasion of Ten- 
nessee — Franklin and Nashville — Sherman's March to 
the Sea — Capture of Savannah — Sherman to Lincoln — 
Lincoln to Sherman — Sherman's March through the 
Carolinas — The Burning of Charleston and Columbia 
— Arrival at Goldsboro — Junction with Schofield — 
Visit to Grant 

"^T7THILE Grant was making his marches, fighting 
W his battles, and carrying on his siege operations 
in Virginia, Sherman in the West was performing the 
task assigned to him by his chief, to pursue, destroy, 
or capture the principal western Confederate army, now 
commanded by General Johnston. The forces which 
under Bragg had been defeated in the previous autumn 
at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, had 
halted as soon as pursuit ceased, and remained in win- 
ter quarters at and about Dalton, only twenty-eight 
or thirty miles on the railroad southeast of Chat- 
tanooga, where their new commander. Johnston, had, 
in the spring of 1864, about sixty-eight thousand men 
with which to oppose the Union advance. 

A few preliminary campaigns and expeditions in 
the West need not here be detailed, as they were not 
decisive. One, however, led by Sherman himself 
from Vicksburg to Meridian, must be mentioned, since, 
during the month of February, it destroyed about one 
hundred miles of the several railroads centering at the 
latter place, and rendered the whole railroad system 
405 



406 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Mississippi practically useless to the Confederates, 
thus contributing essentially to the success of his future 
operations. 

Sherman prepared himself by uniting at Chatta- 
nooga the best material of the three Union armies, that 
of the Cumberland, that of the Tennessee, and that 
of the Ohio, forming a force of nearly one hundred 
thousand men with two hundred and fifty-four guns. 
They were seasoned veterans, whom three years of 
campaigning had taught how to endure every privation, 
and avail themselves of every resource. They were 
provided with every essential supply, but carried with 
them not a pound of useless baggage or impedimenta 
that could retard the rapidity of their movements. 

Sherman had received no specific instructions from 
Grant, except to fight the enemy and damage the war 
resources of the South ; but the situation before him 
clearly indicated the city of Atlanta, Georgia, as his 
first objective, and as his necessary route, the railroad 
leading thither from Chattanooga. It was obviously 
a difficult line of approach, for it traversed a belt of 
the Alleghanies forty miles in width, and in addition 
to the natural obstacles they presented, the Confeder- 
ate commander, anticipating his movement, had pre- 
pared elaborate defensive works at the several most 
available points. 

As agreed upon with Grant, Sherman began his 
march on May 5, 1864, the day following that on which 
Grant entered upon his Wilderness campaign in Vir- 
ginia. These pages do not afford space to describe his 
progress. It is enough to say that with his double 
numbers he pursued the policy of making strong dem- 
onstrations in front, with effective flank movements 
to threaten the railroad in the Confederate rear, by 
which means he forced back the enemy successively 



CAPTURE OF ATLANTA 407 

from point to point, until by the middle of July he was 
in the vicinity of Atlanta, having during his advance 
made only one serious front attack, in which he met 
a costly repulse. His progress was by no means one 
of mere strategical manoeuver. Sherman says that 
during the month of May, across nearly one hundred 
miles of as difficult country as was ever fought over 
by civilized armies, the fighting was continuous, almost 
daily, among trees and bushes, on ground where one 
could rarely see one hundred yards ahead. 

However skilful and meritorious may have been the 
retreat into which Johnston had been forced, it was 
so unwelcome to the Richmond authorities, and dam- 
aging to the Confederate cause, that about the middle 
of July, Jefferson Davis relieved him, and appointed 
one of his corps commanders, General J. B. Hood, in 
his place; whose personal qualities and free criticism 
of his superior led them to expect a change from a 
defensive to an aggressive campaign. Responding to 
this expectation, Hood almost immediately took the 
offensive, and made vigorous attacks on the Union 
positions, but met disastrous repulse, and found him- 
self fully occupied in guarding the defenses of Atlanta. 
For some weeks each army tried ineffectual methods 
to seize the other's railroad communications. But tow- 
ard the end of August, Sherman's (lank movements 
gained such a hold of the Macon railroad at Jones- 
boro, twenty-five miles south of Atlanta, as to endan- 
ger Hood's security; and when, in addition, a detach- 
ment sent to dislodge Sherman was defeated, Hood 
had no alternative but to order an evacuation. On 
September 3, Sherman telegraphed to Washington : 

"Atlanta is ours, and fairly won. . . . Since 
May 5 we have been in one constant battle or skirmish, 
and need rest." 



408 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The fall of Atlanta was a heavy blow to the Con- 
federates. They had, during the war, transformed it 
into a city of mills, foundries, and workshops, from 
which they drew supplies, ammunition, and equip- 
ments, and upon which they depended largely for the 
manufacture and repair of arms. But perhaps even 
more important than the military damage to the South 
resulting from its capture, was its effect upon Northern 
politics. Until then the presidential campaign in prog- 
ress throughout the free States was thought by many 
to involve fluctuating chances under the heavy losses 
and apparently slow progress of both eastern and west- 
ern armies. But the capture of Atlanta instantly in- 
fused new zeal and confidence among the Union voters, 
and from that time onward, the reelection of Mr. Lin- 
coln was placed beyond reasonable doubt. 

Sherman personally entered the city on September 
8, and took prompt measures to turn it into a purely 
military post. He occupied only the inner line of its 
formidable defenses, but so strengthened them as to 
make the place practically impregnable. He proceeded 
at once to remove all its non-combatant inhabitants 
with their effects, arranging a truce with Hood under 
which he furnished transportation to the south for all 
those whose sympathies were with the Confederate 
cause, and sent to the north those who preferred that 
destination. Hood raised a great outcry against what 
he called such barbarity and cruelty, but Sherman re- 
plied that war is war, and if the rebel families wanted 
peace they and their relatives must stop fighting. 

"God will judge us in due time, and he will pro- 
nounce whether it be more humane to fight with a 
town full of women, and the families of a brave people 
at our back, or to remove them in time to places of 
safety among their own friends and people." 



INVASION OF TENNESSEE 409 

Up to his occupation of Atlanta, Sherman's further 
plans had neither been arranged by Grant nor deter- 
mined by himself, and for a while remained somewhat 
undecided. For the time being, he was perfectly se- 
cure in the new stronghold he had captured and com- 
pleted. But his supplies depended upon a line of about 
one hundred and twenty miles of railroad from Atlanta 
to Chattanooga, and very near one hundred and fifty 
miles more from Chattanooga to Nashville. Hood, 
held at bay at Lovejoy's Station, was not strong 
enough to venture a direct attack or undertake a siege, 
but chose the more feasible policy of operating system- 
atically against Sherman's long line of communications. 
In the course of some weeks both sides grew weary of 
the mere waste of time and military strength con- 
sumed in attacking and defending railroad stations, 
and interrupting and reestablishing the regularities of 
provision trains. Toward the end of September, Jef- 
ferson Davis visited Hood, and in rearranging some 
army assignments, united Hood's and an adjoining 
Confederate department under the command of Beau- 
regard; partly with a view to adding the counsels of 
the latter to the always energetic and bold, but some- 
times rash, military judgment of Hood. 

Between these two Hood's eccentric and futile opera- 
tions against Sherman's communications were gradu- 
ally shaded off into a plan for a Confederate invasion 
of Tennessee. Sherman, on his part, finally matured 
his judgment that instead of losing a thousand men 
a month merely defending the railroad, without other 
advantage, he would divide his army, send back a por- 
tion of it under the command of General Thomas to 
defend the State of Tennessee against the impending 
invasion ; and, abandoning the whole line of railroad 
from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and cutting entirely loose 



4 io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

from his base of supplies, march with the remainder 
to the sea; living upon the country, and "making the 
interior of Georgia feel the weight of war." Grant did 
not immediately fall in with Sherman's suggestion ; and 
Sherman prudently waited until the Confederate plan 
of invading Tennessee became further developed. It 
turned out as he hoped and expected. Having gradu- 
ally ceased his raids upon the railroad, Hood, by the 
end of October, moved westward to Tuscumbia on the 
Tennessee River, where he gathered an army of about 
thirty-five thousand, to which a cavalry force under 
Forrest of ten thousand more was soon added. 

Under Beauregard's orders to assume the offensive, 
he began a rapid march northward, and for a time with 
a promise of cutting off some advanced Union detach- 
ments. We need not follow the fortunes of this cam- 
paign further than to state that the Confederate in- 
vasion of Tennessee ended in disastrous failure. It 
was severely checked at the battle of Franklin on No- 
vember 30; and when, in spite of this reverse, Hood 
pushed forward and set his army down before Nash- 
ville, as if for attack or siege, the Union army, con- 
centrated and reinforced to about fifty-five thousand, 
was ready. A severe storm of rain and sleet held the 
confronting armies in forced immobility for a week; 
but on the morning of December 15, 1864, General 
Thomas moved forward to an attack in which on that 
and the following day he inflicted so terrible a defeat 
upon his adversary, that the Confederate army not 
only retreated in rout and panic, but soon literally went 
to pieces in disorganization, and disappeared as a mil- 
itary entity from the western conflict. 

Long before this, Sherman had started on his famous 
march to the sea. His explanations to Grant were so 
convincing, that the general-in-chief, on November 2, 



THE MARCH TO THE SEA 411 

telegraphed him : "Go on as you propose." In antici- 
pation of this permission, he had been preparing him- 
self ever since Hood left him a clear path by starting 
westward on his campaign of invasion. From Atlanta, 
he sent back his sick and wounded and surplus stores 
to Chattanooga, withdrew the garrisons, burned the 
bridges, broke up the railroad, and destroyed the mills, 
foundries, shops and public buildings in Atlanta. 
With sixty thousand of his best soldiers, and sixty-five 
guns, he started on November 15 on his march of three 
hundred miles to the Atlantic. They carried with them 
twenty days' supplies of provisions, five days' supply 
of forage, and two hundred rounds of ammunition, of 
which each man carried forty rounds. 

With perfect confidence in their leader, with perfect 
trust in each others' valor, endurance and good com- 
radeship, in the fine weather of the Southern autumn, 
and singing the inspiring melody of "John Brown's 
Body," Sherman's army began its "marching through 
Georgia" as gaily as if it were starting on a holiday. 
And, indeed, it may almost be said such was their expe- 
rience in comparison with the hardships of war which 
many of these veterans had seen in their varied cam- 
paigning. They marched as nearly as might be in four 
parallel columns abreast, making an average of about 
fifteen miles a day. Kilpatrick's admirable cavalry 
kept their front and flanks free from the improvised 
militia and irregular troopers of the enemy. Carefully 
organized foraging parties brought in their daily sup- 
ply of miscellaneous provisions — corn, meat, poultry, 
and sweet potatoes, of which the season had yielded 
an abundant harvest along their route. 

The Confederate authorities issued excited procla- 
mations and orders, calling on the people to "fly to 
arms," and to "assail the invader in front, flank, and 



412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rear, by night and by day." But no rising occurred 
that in any way checked the constant progress of the 
march. The Southern whites were, of course, silent 
and sullen, but the negroes received the Yankees with 
demonstrations of welcome and good will, and in spite 
of Sherman's efforts, followed in such numbers as to 
embarrass his progress. As he proceeded, he de- 
stroyed the railroads by filling up cuts, burning ties, 
heating the rails red hot and twisting them around 
trees and into irreparable spirals. Threatening the 
principal cities to the right and left, he marched skil- 
fully between and past them. 

He reached the outer defenses of Savannah on De- 
cember 10, easily driving before him about ten thou- 
sand of the enemy. On December 13, he stormed Fort 
McAllister, and communicated with the Union fleet 
through Ossabaw Sound, reporting to Washington 
that his march had been most agreeable, that he had 
not lost a wagon on the trip, that he had utterly de- 
stroyed over two hundred miles of rails, and consumed 
stores and provisions that were essential to Lee's and 
Hood's armies. With pardonable exultation General 
Sherman telegraphed to President Lincoln on Decem- 
ber 22 : 

"I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city 
of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns 
and plenty of ammunition. Also about twenty-five 
thousand bales of cotton." 

He had reason to be gratified with the warm ac- 
knowledgment which President Lincoln wrote him in 
the following letter : 

"My dear General Sherman: Many, many 
thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savan- 
nah. When you were about leaving Atlanta for the 
Atlantic coast I was anxious, if not fearful ; but feeling 



LINCOLN TO SHERMAN 413 

that you were the better judge, and remembering that 
'nothing risked, nothing gained,' I did not interfere. 
Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all 
yours, for I believe none of us went farther than to 
acquiesce. And taking the work of General Thomas 
into the count, as it should be taken, it is, indeed, a 
great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and 
immediate military advantages, but in showing to the 
world that your army could be divided, putting the 
stronger part to an important new service, and yet leav- 
ing enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the 
whole — Hood's army — it brings those who sat in dark- 
ness to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it 
will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself to 
decide. Please make my grateful acknowledgments to 
your whole army, officers and men." 

It was again General Sherman who planned and de- 
cided the next step of the campaign. Grant sent him 
orders to fortify a strong post, leave his artillery and 
cavalry, and bring his infantry by sea to unite with the 
Army of the Potomac before Petersburg. Greatly to 
Sherman's satisfaction, this order was soon revoked, 
and he was informed that Grant wished "the whole 
matter of your future actions should be left entirely 
to your own discretion." In Sherman's mind, the next 
steps to be taken were "as clear as daylight." The 
progress of the war in the West could now be described 
step by step, and its condition and probable course be 
estimated with sound judgment. The opening of the 
Mississippi River in the previous year had cut off from 
the rebellion the vast resources west of the great river. 
Sherman's Meridian campaign in February had ren- 
dered useless the railroads of the State of Mississippi. 
The capture of Atlanta and the march to the sea had 
ruined the railroads of Georgia, cutting off another 



4T4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

huge slice of Confederate resources. The battles of 
Franklin and Nashville had practically annihilated the 
principal Confederate army in the West. Sherman 
now proposed to Grant that he would subject the two 
Carolinas to the same process, by marching his army 
through the heart of them from Savannah to Raleigh. 

"The game is then up with Lee," he confidently 
added, "unless he comes out of Richmond, avoids you, 
and fights me, in which case I should reckon on your 
being on his heels. ... If you feel confident that 
you can whip Lee outside of his intrenchments, I feel 
equally confident that I can handle him in the open 
country." 

Grant promptly adopted the plan, and by formal 
orders directed Sherman to execute it. Several minor 
western expeditions were organized to contribute to its 
success. The Union fleet on the coast was held in 
readiness to cooperate as far as possible with Sherman's 
advance, and to afford him a new base of supply, if, 
at some suitable point he should desire to establish 
communications with it. When, in the middle of Jan- 
uary, 1865, a naval expedition captured Fort Fisher at 
the mouth of Cape Fear River, an army corps under 
General Schofield was brought east from Thomas's 
Army of the Tennessee, and sent by sea to the North 
Carolina coast to penetrate into the interior and form 
a junction with Sherman when he should arrive. 

Having had five weeks for rest and preparation, 
Sherman began the third stage of his campaign on 
February 1, with a total of sixty thousand men, provi- 
sions for twenty days, forage for seven, and a full 
supply of ammunition for a great battle. This new un- 
dertaking proved a task of much greater difficulty and 
severer hardship than his march to the sea. Instead of 
the genial autumn weather, the army had now to face 



FALL OF CHARLESTON 415 

the wintry storms that blew in from the neighboring 
coast. Instead of the dry Georgia uplands, his route 
lay across a low sandy country cut by rivers with 
branches at right angles to his line of march, and bor- 
dered by broad and miry swamps. But this was an 
extraordinary army, which faced exposure, labor and 
peril with a determination akin to contempt. Here 
were swamps and water-courses to be waded waist 
deep ; endless miles of corduroy road to be laid and re- 
laid as course after course sank into the mud under 
the heavy army wagons ; frequent head-water channels 
of rivers to be bridged ; the lines of railroad along their 
route to be torn up and rendered incapable of repair; 
food to be gathered by foraging; keeping up, mean- 
while, a daily average of ten or twelve miles of march- 
ing. Under such conditions, Sherman's army* made a 
mid-winter march of four hundred and twenty-five 
miles in fifty days, crossing five navigable rivers, occu- 
pying three important cities, and rendering the whole 
railroad system of South Carolina useless to the enemy. 
The ten to fifteen thousand Confederates with which 
General Hardee had evacuated Savannah and retreated 
to Charleston could, of course, oppose no serious oppo- 
sition to Sherman's march. On the contrary, when 
Sherman reached Columbia, the capital of South Caro- 
lina, on February 16, Hardee evacuated Charleston, 
which had been defended for four long years against 
every attack of a most powerful Union fleet, and where 
the most ingenious siege-works and desperate storming 
assault had failed to wrest Fort Wagner from the en- 
emy. But though Charleston fell without a battle, and 
was occupied by the Union troops on the eighteenth, 
the destructive hand of war was at last heavily laid 
upon her. The Confederate government pertinaciously 
adhered to the policy of burning accumulations of 



416 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cotton to prevent it falling into Union hands; and 
the supply gathered in Charleston to be sent abroad by 
blockade runners, having been set on fire by the evacu- 
ating Confederate officials, the flames not only spread 
to the adjoining buildings, but grew into a great con- 
flagration that left the heart of the city a waste of 
blackened walls to illustrate the folly of the first seces- 
sion ordinance. Columbia, the capital, underwent the 
same fate, to even a broader extent. Here the cotton 
had been piled in a narrow street, and when the torch 
was applied by similar Confederate orders, the rising 
wind easily floated the blazing flakes to the near roofs 
of buildings. On the night following Sherman's en- 
trance, the wind rose to a gale, and neither the efforts 
of the citizens, nor the ready help of Sherman's sol- 
diers, were able to check the destruction. Confeder- 
ate writers long nursed the accusation that it was the 
Union army which burned the city as a deliberate act 
of vengeance. Contrary proof is furnished by the 
orders of Sherman, leaving for the sufferers a generous 
supply of food, as well as by the careful investigation 
by the mixed commission on American and British 
claims, under the treaty of Washington. 

Still pursuing his march, Sherman arrived at 
Cheraw March 3, and opened communication with 
General Terry, who had advanced from Fort Fisher to 
Wilmington. Hitherto, his advance had been practi- 
cally unopposed. But now he learned that General 
Johnston had once more been placed in command of the 
Confederate forces, and was collecting an army near 
Raleigh, North Carolina. Well knowing the ability of 
this general, Sherman became more prudent in his 
movements. But Johnston was able to gather a force 
of only twenty-five or thirty thousand men, of which 
the troops Hardee brought from Charleston formed the 



ARRIVAL AT GOLDSBORO 417 

nucleus; and the two minor engagements on March 16 
and 19 did little to impede Sherman's advance to 
Goldsboro, where he arrived on March 23, forming a 
junction with the Union army sent by sea under Scho- 
field, that had reached the same point the previous day. 
The third giant stride of Sherman's great campaign 
was thus happily accomplished. His capture of At- 
lanta, his march to the sea and capture of Savannah, 
his progress through the Carolinas, and the fall of 
Charleston, formed an aggregate expedition covering 
nearly a thousand miles, with military results that ren- 
dered rebellion powerless in the central States of the 
Southern Confederacy. Several Union cavalry raids 
had accomplished similar destruction of Confederate 
resources in Alabama and the country bordering on 
East Tennessee. Military affairs were plainly in a con- 
dition which justified Sherman in temporarily devolv- 
ing his command on General Schofield and hurrying 
by sea to make a brief visit for urgent consultation with 
General Grant at his headquarters before Richmond 
and Petersburg. 



XXX 

Military Governors — Lincoln's Theory of Reconstruction 
— Congressional Election in Louisiana — Letter to Mili- 
tary Governors — Letter to Shepley — Amnesty Procla- 
mation, December 8, 1863 — Instructions to Banks — 
Banks's Action in Louisiana — Louisiana Abolishes Sla- 
very — Arkansas Abolishes Slavery — Reconstruction in 
Tennessee — Missouri Emancipation — Lincoln's Letter 
to Drake — Missouri Abolishes Slavery — Emancipation 
in Maryland — Maryland Abolishes Slavery 

TO subdue the Confederate armies and establish 
order under martial law was not the only task 
before President Lincoln. As rapidly as rebel States 
or portions of States were occupied by Federal troops, 
it became necessary to displace usurping Confederate 
officials and appoint in their stead loyal State, county, 
and subordinate officers to restore the administration 
of local civil law under the authority of the United 
States. In western Virginia the people had spontane- 
ously effected this reform, first by repudiating the 
Richmond secession ordinance and organizing a provi- 
sional State government, and, second, by adopting a 
new constitution and obtaining admission to the Union 
as the new State of West Virginia. In Missouri the 
State convention which refused to pass a secession or- 
dinance effected the same object by establishing a pro- 
visional State government. In both these States the 
whole process of what in subsequent years was com- 
prehensively designated "reconstruction" was carried 
418 



MILITARY GOVERNORS 419 

on by popular local action, without any Federal initia- 
tive or interference other than prompt Federal re- 
cognition and substantial military support and pro- 
tection. 

But in other seceded States there was no such 
groundwork of loyal popular authority upon which to 
rebuild the structure of civil government. Therefore, 
when portions of Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and 
North Carolina came under Federal control, President 
Lincoln, during the first half of 1862, appointed mili- 
tary governors to begin the work of temporary civil 
administration. He had a clear and consistent consti- 
tutional theory under which this could be clone. In his 
first inaugural he announced the doctrine that "the 
union of these States is perpetual" and "unbroken." 
His special message to Congress on July 4, 1861, added 
the supplementary declaration that "the States have 
their status in the Union, and they have no other legal 
status." The same message contained the further defi- 
nition : 

"The people of Virginia have thus allowed this giant 
insurrection to make its nest within her borders; and 
this government has no choice left but to deal with it 
where it finds it. And it has the less regret, as the loyal 
citizens have, in due form, claimed its protection. 
Those loyal citizens this government is bound to recog- 
nize and protect, as being Virginia." 

The action of Congress entirely conformed to this 
theory. That body admitted to seats senators and 
representatives from the provisional State governments 
of West Virginia and Missouri; and also allowed Sena- 
tor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to retain his seat, 
and admitted Horace Maynard and Andrew J. Clem- 
ents as representatives from the same State, though 
since their election Tennessee had undergone the usual 



420 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

secession usurpation, and had as yet organized no loyal 
provisional government. 

The progress of the Union armies was so far checked 
during the second half of 1862, that Military Governor 
Phelps, appointed for Arkansas, did not assume his 
functions; and Military Governor Stanley wielded but 
slight authority in North Carolina. Senator Andrew 
Johnson, appointed military governor of Tennessee, 
established himself at Nashville, the capital, and, 
though Union control of Tennessee fluctuated greatly, 
he was able, by appointing loyal State and county offi- 
cers, to control the administration of civil government 
in considerable districts, under substantial Federal 
jurisdiction. 

In the State of Louisiana the process of restoring 
Federal authority was carried on a step farther, owing 
largely to the fact that the territory occupied by the 
Union army, though quite limited, comprising only 
the city of New Orleans and a few adjacent parishes, 
was more securely held, and its hostile frontier less 
disturbed. It soon became evident that considerable 
Union sentiment yet existed in the captured city and 
surrounding districts, and when some of the loyal citi- 
zens began to manifest impatience at the restraints of 
martial law, President Lincoln in a frank letter pointed 
the way to a remedy : 

"The people of Louisiana," he wrote under date of 
July 28, 1862, "who wish protection to person and 
property, have but to reach forth their hands and take 
it. Let them in good faith reinaugurate the national 
authority and set up a State government conforming 
thereto under the Constitution. They know how to 
do it, and can have the protection of the army while 
doing it. The army will be withdrawn so soon as such 
State government can dispense with its presence, and 



CIRCULAR LETTER 421 

the people of the State can then, upon the old con- 
stitutional terms, govern themselves to their own 
liking." 

At about this date there occurred the serious military 
crisis in Virginia ; and the battles of the Peninsula, of 
the second Bull Run, and of Antietam necessarily com- 
pelled the postponement of minor questions. But dur- 
ing this period the President's policy on the slavery 
question reached its development and solution, and 
when, on September 22, he issued his preliminary 
proclamation of emancipation, it also paved the way 
for a further defining of his policy of reconstruction. 
That proclamation announced the penalty of military 
emancipation against all States in rebellion on the suc- 
ceeding first day of January; but also provided that if 
the people thereof were represented in Congress by 
properly elected members, they should be deemed not 
in rebellion, and thereby escape the penalty. Wishing 
now to prove the sincerity of what he said in the 
Greeley letter, that his paramount object was to save 
the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery, 
he wrote a circular letter to the military governors and 
commanders in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas, 
instructing them to permit and aid the people within 
the districts held by them to hold elections for members 
of Congress, and perhaps a legislature, State officers, 
and United States senators. 

"In all available ways," he wrote, "give the people 
a chance to express their wishes at these elections. 
Follow forms of law as far as convenient, but at all 
events get the expression of the largest number of the 
people possible. All see how such action will connect 
with and affect the proclamation of September 22. Of 
course the men elected should be gentlemen of charac- 
ter, willing to swear support to the Constitution as of 



422 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

old, and known to be above reasonable suspicion of 
duplicity." 

But the President wished this to be a real and not 
a sham proceeding, as he explained a month later in a 
letter to Governor Shepley : 

"We do not particularly need members of Congress 
from there to enable us to get along with legislation 
here. What we do want is the conclusive evidence 
that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be 
members of Congress and to swear support to the Con- 
stitution, and that other respectable citizens there are 
willing to vote for them and send them. To send a 
parcel of Northern men here as representatives, elected, 
as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at 
the point of the bayonet, would be disgraceful and out- 
rageous ; and were I a member of Congress here, I 
would vote against admitting any such man to a seat." 

Thus instructed, Governor Shepley caused an elec- 
tion to be held in the first and second congressional 
districts of Louisiana on December 3, 1862, at which 
members of Congress were chosen. No Federal office- 
holder was a candidate, and about one half the usual 
vote was polled. The House of Representatives ad- 
mitted them to seats after full scrutiny, the chairman 
of the committee declaring this "had every essential of 
a regular election in a time of most profound peace, 
with the exception of the fact that the proclamation was 
issued by the military instead of the civil governor of 
Louisiana." 

Military affairs were of such importance and ab- 
sorbed so much attention during the year 1863, both at 
Washington and at the headquarters of the various 
armies, that the subject of reconstruction was of neces- 
sity somewhat neglected. The military governor of 
Louisiana indeed ordered a registration of loyal voters, 



LETTER TO GENERAL BANKS 423 

about the middle of June, for the purpose of organizing 
a loyal State government; but its only result was to 
develop an inevitable antagonism and contest between 
conservatives who desired that the old constitution of 
Louisiana prior to the rebellion should be revived, by 
which the institution of slavery as then existing would 
be maintained, and the free-State party which de- 
manded that an entirely new constitution be framed 
and adopted, in which slavery should be summarily 
abolished. The conservatives asked President Lincoln 
to adopt their plan. While the President refused this, 
he in a letter to General Banks dated August 5. 1863, 
suggested the middle course of gradual emancipation. 

"For my own part," he wrote, "I think I shall not, 
in any event, retract the emancipation proclamation; 
nor, as Executive, ever return to slavery any person 
who is freed by the terms of that proclamation, or by 
any of the acts of Congress. If Louisiana shall send 
members to Congress, their admission to seats will 
depend, as you know, upon the respective houses and 
not upon the President." 

"I would be glad for her to make a new constitution 
recognizing the emancipation proclamation and adopt- 
ing emancipation in those parts of the State to 
which the proclamation does not apply. And while 
she is at it, I think it would not be objectionable for 
her to adopt some practical system by which the two 
races could gradually live themselves out of their old 
relation to each other, and both come out better pre- 
pared for the new. Education for young blacks should 
be included in the plan. After all, the power or ele- 
ment of 'contract' may be sufficient for this probation- 
ary period, and by its simplicity and flexibility may be 
the better." 

During the autumn months the President's mind 



424 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dwelt more and more on the subject of reconstruction, 
and he matured a general plan which he laid before 
Congress in his annual message to that body on Decem- 
ber 8, 1863. He issued on the same day a proclamation 
of amnesty, on certain conditions, to all persons in re- 
bellion, except certain specified classes, who should take 
a prescribed oath of allegiance. The proclamation fur- 
ther provided that whenever a number of persons so 
amnestied in any rebel State, equal to one tenth the 
vote cast at the presidential election of i860, should 
"reestablish a State government which shall be repub- 
lican, and in no wise contravening said oath," such 
would be recognized as the true government of the 
State. The annual message discussed and advocated 
the plan at length, but also added : "Saying that re- 
construction will be accepted if presented in a specified 
way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other 
way." 

This plan of reconstructing what came to be called 
"ten per cent. States," met much opposition in Con- 
gress, and that body, reversing its action in former in- 
stances, long refused admission to members and sena- 
tors from States similarly organized; but the point 
needs no further mention here. 

A month before the amnesty proclamation the Presi- 
dent had written to General Banks, expressing his 
great disappointment that the reconstruction in Louisi- 
ana had been permitted to fall in abeyance by the lead- 
ing Union officials there, civil and military. 

"I do, however," he wrote, "urge both you and them 
to lose no more time. Governor Shepley has special in- 
structions from the War Department. I wish him — 
these gentlemen and others cooperating — without wait- 
ing for more territory, to go to work and give me »a 
tangible nucleus which the remainder of the State may 



INSTRUCTIONS TO BANKS 425 

rally around as fast as it can, and which I can at once 
recognize and sustain as the true State government." 

He urged that such reconstruction should have in 
view a new free-State constitution, for, said he : 

"If a few professedly loyal men shall draw the dis- 
loyal about them, and colorably set up a State govern- 
ment, repudiating the emancipation proclamation and 
reestablishing slavery, I cannot recognize or sustain 
their work. ... I have said, and say again, that 
if a new State government, acting in harmony with this 
government and consistently with general freedom, 
shall think best to adopt a reasonable temporary ar- 
rangement in relation to the landless and houseless 
freed people, I do not object; but my word is out to 
be for and not against them on the question of their 
permanent freedom." 

General Banks in reply excused his inaction by ex- 
plaining that the military governor and others had 
given him to understand that they were exclusively 
charged with the work of reconstruction in Louisiana. 
To this the President rejoined under date of December 
24, 1863: 

"I have all the while intended you to be master, as 
well in regard to reorganizing a State government for 
Louisiana as in regard to the military matters of the 
department, and hence my letters on reconstruction 
have nearly, if not quite, all been addressed to you. 
My error has been that it did not occur to me that Gov- 
ernor Shepley or any one else would set up a claim 
to act independently of you. ... I now dis- 
tinctly tell you that you are master of all, and that I 
wish you to take the case as you find it, and give us 
a free-State reorganization of Louisiana in the shortest 
possible time." 

Under this explicit direction of the President, and 



426 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

basing his action on martial law as the fundamental 
law of the State, the general caused a governor and 
State officials to be elected on February 22, 1864. To 
override the jealousy and quarrels of both the conser- 
vative and free-State parties, he set out in his proclama- 
tion that the officials to be chosen should — 

"Until others are appointed by competent authority, 
constitute the civil government of the State, under the 
constitution and laws of Louisiana, except so much 
of the said constitution and laws as recognize, regulate, 
or relate to slavery ; which, being inconsistent with the 
present condition of public affairs, and plainly inappli- 
cable to any class of persons now existing within its 
limits, must be suspended, and they are therefore and 
hereby declared to be inoperative and void." 

The newly elected governor was inaugurated on 
March 4, with imposing public ceremonies, and the 
President also invested him "with the powers exer- 
cised hitherto by the military governor of Louisiana." 
General Banks further caused delegates to a State con- 
vention to be chosen, who, in a session extending from 
April 6 to July 25, perfected and adopted a new con- 
stitution, which was again adopted by popular vote on 
September 5 following. General Banks reported the 
constitution to be "one of the best ever penned. . . . 
It abolishes slavery in the State, and forbids the legis- 
lature to enact any law recognizing property in man. 
The emancipation is instantaneous and absolute, with- 
out condition or compensation, and nearly unanimous." 

The State of Arkansas had been forced into rebellion 
by military terrorism, and remained under Confederate 
domination only because the Union armies could afford 
the latent loyal sentiment of the State no effective sup- 
port until the fall of Vicksburg and the opening of the 
Mississippi. After that decisive victory, General 



INSTRUCTIONS TO STEELE 427 

Steele marched a Union column of about thirteen thou- 
sand from Helena to Little Rock, the capital, which 
surrendered to him on the evening of September 10, 
1863. By December, eight regiments of Arkansas 
citizens had been formed for service in the Union army ; 
and, following the amnesty proclamation of December 
8, the reorganization of a loyal State government was 
speedily brought about, mainly by spontaneous popular 
action, of course under the direction and with the assis- 
tance of General Steele. 

In response to a petition, President Lincoln sent 
General Steele on January 20, 1864, a letter repeating 
substantially the instructions he had given General 
Banks for Louisiana. Before these could be carried 
out, popular action had assembled at Little Rock on 
January 8, 1864, a formal delegate convention, com- 
posed of forty-four delegates who claimed to represent 
twenty-two out of the fifty-four counties of the State. 
On January 22 this convention adopted an amended 
constitution which declared the act of secession null 
and void, abolished slavery immediately and uncondi- 
tionally, and wholly repudiated the Confederate debt. 
The convention appointed a provisional State govern- 
ment, and under its schedule an election was held on 
March 14, 1864. During the three days on which the 
polls were kept open, under the orders of General 
Steele, who by the President's suggestion adopted the 
convention program, a total vote of 12,179 was cast 
for the constitution, and only 226 against it ; while the 
provisional governor was also elected for a new term, 
together with members of Congress and a legislature 
which in due time chose United States senators. By 
this time Congress had manifested its opposition to the 
President's plan, but Mr. Lincoln stood firm, and on 
June 29 wrote to General Steele : 



428 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"I understand that Congress declines to admit to 
seats the persons sent as senators and representatives 
from Arkansas. These persons apprehend that in con- 
sequence you may not support the new State govern- 
ment there as you otherwise would. My wish is that 
you give that government and the people there the 
same support and protection that you would if the mem- 
bers had been admitted, because in no event, nor in any 
view of the case, can this do any harm, while it will be 
the best you can do toward suppressing the rebellion." 

While Military Governor Andrew Johnson had been 
the earliest to begin the restoration of loyal Federal 
authority in the State of Tennessee, the course of cam- 
paign and battle in that State delayed its completion 
to a later period than in the others. The invasion of 
Tennessee by the Confederate General Bragg in the 
summer of 1862, and the long delay of the Union 
General Rosecrans to begin an active campaign against 
him during the summer of 1863, kept civil reorganiza- 
tion in a very uncertain and chaotic condition. When 
at length Rosecrans advanced and occupied Chatta- 
nooga, President Lincoln deemed it a propitious time 
to vigorously begin reorganization, and under date of 
September 11, 1863, he wrote the military governor 
emphatic suggestions that: 

"The reinauguration must not be such as to give con- 
trol of the State and its representation in Congress 
to the enemies of the Union, driving its friends there 
into political exile. . . . You must have it other- 
wise. Let the reconstruction be the work of such men 
only as can be trusted for the Union. Exclude all 
others; and trust that your government so organized 
will be recognized here as being the one of republican 
form to be guaranteed to the State, and to be protected 
against invasion and domestic violence. It is some- 



INSTRUCTIONS TO JOHNSON 429 

thing on the question of time to remember that it can- 
not be known who is next to occupy the position I now 
hold, nor what he will do. I see that you have de- 
clared in favor of emancipation in Tennessee, for 
which, may God bless you. Get emancipation into your 
new State government — constitution — and there will 
be no such word as fail for your case." 

In another letter of September 19, the President sent 
the governor specific authority to execute the scheme 
outlined in his letter of advice; but no substantial suc- 
cess had yet been reached in the process of reconstruc- 
tion in Tennessee during the year 1864, when the Con- 
federate army under Hood turned northward from 
Atlanta to begin its third and final invasion of the 
State. This once more delayed all work of recon- 
struction until the Confederate army was routed and 
dispersed by the battle of Nashville on December 15, 
1864. Previous popular action had called a State con- 
vention, which, taking immediate advantage of the 
expulsion of the enemy, met in Nashville on January 
9, 1865, in which fifty-eight counties and some regi- 
ments were represented by about four hundred and 
sixty-seven delegates. After six days of deliberation 
the convention adopted a series of amendments to the 
constitution, the main ordinance of which provided : 

''That slavery and involuntary servitude, except as 
a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted, are hereby forever abolished and 
prohibited throughout the State." 

These amendments were duly adopted at a popular 
election held on February 22, and the complete organ- 
ization of a loyal State government under them fol- 
lowed in due course. 

The State of Missouri needed no reconstruction. 
It has already been said that her local affairs were ad- 



43Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ministered by a provisional State government insti- 
tuted by the State convention chosen by popular elec- 
tion before rebellion broke out. In this State, there- 
fore, the institution of slavery was suppressed by the 
direct action of the people, but not without a long and 
bitter conflict of party factions and military strife. 
There existed here two hostile currents of public opin- 
ion, one, the intolerant pro-slavery prejudices of its 
rural population; the other, the progressive and lib- 
eral spirit dominant in the city of St. Louis, with its 
heavy German population, which, as far back as 1856, 
had elected to Congress a candidate who boldly advo- 
cated gradual emancipation: St. Louis, with outlying 
cities and towns, supplying during the whole rebel- 
lion the dominating influence that held the State in the 
Union, and at length transformed her from a slave to 
a free State. 

Missouri suffered severely in the war, but not 
through important campaigns or great battles. Per- 
sistent secession conspiracy, the Kansas episodes of 
border strife, and secret orders of Confederate agents 
from Arkansas instigating unlawful warfare, made 
Missouri a hotbed of guerrilla uprisings and of relent- 
less neighborhood feuds, in which armed partizan con- 
flict often degenerated into shocking barbarity, and 
the pretense of war into the malicious execution of 
private vengeance. President Lincoln drew a vivid 
picture of the chronic disorders in Missouri in reply 
to complaints demanding the removal of General Scho- 
field from local military command : 

"We are in civil war. In such cases there always is 
a main question ; but in this case that question is a per- 
plexing compound — Union and slavery. It thus be- 
comes a question not of two sides merely, but of at 
least four sides, even among those who are for the 



LETTER TO DRAKE 431 

Union, saying nothing of those who are against it. 
Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not with- 
out, slavery — those for it without, but not with — 
those for it with or without, but prefer it with — and 
those for it with or without, but prefer it without. 
Among these again is a subdivision of those who are 
for gradual but not for immediate, and those who are 
for immediate, but not for gradual extinction of slavery. 
It is easy to conceive that all these shades of opinion, 
and even more, may be sincerely entertained by honest 
and truthful men. Yet, all being for the Union, by rea- 
son of these differences each will prefer a different way 
of sustaining the Union. At once sincerity is ques- 
tioned, and motives are assailed. Actual war coming, 
blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is 
forced from old channels into confusion. Deception 
breeds and thrives. Confidence dies and universal sus- 
picion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his 
neighbor, lest he be first killed by him. Revenge and 
retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may 
be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every 
foul bird comes abroad and every dirty reptile rises up. 
These add crime to confusion. Strong measures 
deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make 
worse by maladministration. Murders for old 
grudges, and murders for pelf, proceed under any 
cloak that will best cover for the occasion. These 
causes amply account for what has occurred in Mis- 
souri, without ascribing it to the weakness or wicked- 
ness of any general. The newspaper files, those chron- 
iclers of current events, will show that the evils now 
complained of were quite as prevalent under Fremont, 
Hunter, Halleck, and Curtis, as under Schofield. . . . 
I do not feel justified to enter upon the broad field you 
present in regard to the political differences between 



432 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

radicals and conservatives. From time to time I have 
done and said what appeared to me proper to do and 
say. The public knows it all. It obliges nobody to fol- 
low me, and I trust it obliges me to follow nobody. 
The radicals and conservatives each agree with me in 
some things and disagree in others. I could wish both 
to agree with me in all things ; for then they would 
agree with each other, and would be too strong for any 
foe from any quarter. They, however, choose to do 
otherwise, and I do not question their right. I, too, 
shall do what seems to be my duty. I hold whoever 
commands in Missouri, or elsewhere, responsible to me, 
and not to either radicals or conservatives. It is my 
duty to hear all ; but at last I must, within my sphere, 
judge what to do and what to forbear." 

It is some consolation to history, that out of this 
blood and travail grew the political regeneration of the 
State. Slavery and emancipation never gave each 
other a moment's truce. The issue was raised to an 
acute stage by Fremont's proclamation in August, 
1 86 1. Though that ill-advised measure was revoked 
by President Lincoln, the friction and irritation of war 
kept it alive, and in the following year a member of the 
Missouri State convention offered a bill to accept and 
apply President Lincoln's plan of compensated abolish- 
ment. Further effort was made in this direction in 
Congress, where in January, 1863, the House passed 
a bill appropriating ten million dollars, and in Febru- 
ary, the Senate another bill appropriating fifteen mil- 
lion dollars to aid compensated abolishment in Mis- 
souri. But the stubborn opposition of three pro-slavery 
Missouri members of the House prevented action on 
the latter bill or any compromise. 

The question, however, continually grew among the 
people of Missouri, and made such advance that parties, 



LETTER TO SCHOFIELD 433 

accepting the main point as already practically de- 
cided, at length only divided upon the mode of pro- 
cedure. The conservatives wanted the work to be 
done by the old State convention, the radicals desired 
to submit it to a new convention fresh from the people. 
Legislative agreement having failed, the provisional 
governor called the old State convention together. 
The convention leaders who controlled that body in- 
quired of the President whether he would sustain their 
action. To this he made answer in a letter to Schofield 
dated June 22, 1863: 

"Your despatch, asking in substance whether, in 
case Missouri shall adopt gradual emancipation, the 
general government will protect slave-owners in that 
species of property during the short time it shall be 
permitted by the State to exist within it, has been 
received. Desirous as I am that emancipation shall 
be adopted by Missouri, and believing as I do that 
gradual can be made better than immediate for both 
black and white, except when military necessity 
changes the case, my impulse is to say that such pro- 
tection would be given. I cannot know exactly what 
shape an act of emancipation may take. If the period 
from the initiation to the final end should be compara- 
tively short, and the act should prevent persons being 
sold during that period into more lasting slavery, the 
whole would be easier. I do not wish to pledge the 
general government to the affirmative support of even 
temporary slavery beyond what can be fairly claimed 
under the Constitution. I suppose, however, this is 
not desired, but that it is desired for the military force 
of the United States, while in Missouri, to not be used 
in subverting the temporarily reserved legal rights in 
slaves during the progress of emancipation. This I 
would desire also." 



434 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Proceeding with its work, the old State convention, 
which had hitherto made a most honorable record, 
neglected a great opportunity. It indeed adopted an 
ordinance of gradual emancipation on July i, 1863, 
but of such an uncertain and dilatory character, that 
public opinion in the State promptly rejected it. By 
the death of the provisional governor on January 31, 
1864, the conservative party of Missouri lost its most 
trusted leader, and thereafter the radicals succeeded 
to the political power of the State. At the presiden- 
tial election of 1864, that party chose a new State con- 
vention, which met in St. Louis on January 6, 1865, 
and on the sixth day of its session (January 11) for- 
mally adopted an ordinance of immediate emancipation. 

Maryland, like Missouri, had no need of recon- 
struction. Except for the Baltimore riot and the arrest 
of her secession legislature during the first year of the 
war, her State government continued its regular func- 
tions. But a strong popular undercurrent of virulent 
secession sympathy among a considerable minority of 
her inhabitants was only held in check by the mili- 
tary power of the Union, and for two years eman- 
cipation found no favor in the public opinion of the 
State. Her representatives, like those of most other 
border States, coldly refused President Lincoln's 
earnest plea to accept compensated abolishment ; and 
a bill in Congress to give Maryland ten million dollars 
for that object was at once blighted by the declaration 
of one of her leading representatives that Maryland 
did not ask for it. Nevertheless, the subject could no 
more be ignored there than in other States ; and after 
the President's emancipation proclamation an emanci- 
pation party developed itself in Maryland. 

There was no longer any evading the practical issue, 
when, by the President's direction, the Secretary of 



LINCOLN TO HOFFMAN 435 

War issued a military order, early in October, 1863, 
regulating the raising of colored troops in certain bor- 
der States, which decreed that slaves might be enlisted 
without consent of their owners, but provided compen- 
sation in such cases. At the November election of that 
year the emancipation party of Maryland elected its 
ticket by an overwhelming majority, and a legislature 
that enacted laws under which a State convention was 
chosen to amend the constitution. Of the delegates 
elected on April 6, 1864, sixty-one were emancipation- 
ists, and only thirty-five opposed. 

After two months' debate this convention by nearly 
two thirds adopted an article : 

"That hereafter in this State there shall be neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude except in punishment 
of crime whereof the party shall have been duly con- 
victed ; and all persons held to service or labor as slaves 
are hereby declared free." 

The decisive test of a popular vote accepting the 
amended constitution as a whole, remained, however, 
yet to be undergone. President Lincoln willingly com- 
plied with a request to throw his official voice and 
influence in favor of the measure, and wrote, on Octo- 
ber 10, 1864: 

"A convention of Maryland has framed a new con- 
stitution for the State; a public meeting is called for 
this evening at Baltimore to aid in securing its ratifica- 
tion by the people ; and you ask a word from me for the 
occasion. I presume the only feature of the instru- 
ment about which there is serious controversy is that 
which provides for the extinction of slavery. It needs 
not to be a secret, and I presume it is no secret, that 
I wish success to this provision. I desire it on every 
consideration. I wish all men to be free. I wish the 
material prosperity of the already free, which I feel 



436 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sure the extinction of slavery would bring. I wish to 
see in process of disappearing that only thing which 
ever could bring this nation to civil war. I attempt 
no argument. Argument upon the question is already 
exhausted by the abler, better informed, and more 
immediately interested sons of Maryland herself. I 
only add that I shall be gratified exceedingly if the 
good people of the State shall, by their votes, ratify the 
new constitution." 

At the election which was held on October 12 and 13, 
stubborn Maryland conservatism, whose roots reached 
far back to the colonial days, made its last desperate 
stand, and the constitution was ratified by a majority 
of only three hundred and seventy-five votes out of 
a total of nearly sixty thousand. But the result was 
accepted as decisive, and in due time the governor 
issued his proclamation, declaring the new constitution 
legally adopted. 



XXXI 

Shaping of the Presidential Campaign — Criticisms of Mr. 
Lincoln — Chase's Presidential Ambitions — The Pome- 
roy Circular — Cleveland Convention — Attempt to Nom- 
inate Grant — Meeting of Baltimore Convention — Lin- 
coln's Letter to Schurz — Platform of Republican 
Convention — Lincoln Renominated — Refuses to Indi- 
cate Preference for Vice-President — Johnson Nomi- 
nated for Vice-President — Lincoln's Speech to Commit- 
tee of Notification — Reference to Mexico in his Letter 
of Acceptance — The French in Mexico 

THE final shaping of the campaign, the definition 
of the issues, the wording of the platforms, and 
selection of the candidates, had grown much more out 
of national politics than out of mere party combination 
or personal intrigues. The success of the war, and 
fate of the Union, of course dominated every other 
consideration ; and next to this the treatment of the 
slavery question became in a hundred forms almost 
a direct personal interest. Mere party feeling, which 
had utterly vanished for a few months in the first 
grand uprising of the North, had been once more awak- 
ened by the first Bull Run defeat, and from that time 
onward was heard in loud and constant criticism of 
Mr. Lincoln and the acts of his supporters wherever 
they touched the institution of slavery. The Demo- 
cratic party, which had been allied with the Southern 
politicians in the interests of that institution through 
so many decades, quite naturally took up its habitual 

437 



438 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

role of protest that slavery should receive no hurt or 
damage from the incidents of war, where, in the bor- 
der States, it still had constitutional existence among 
loyal Union men. 

On the other hand, among Republicans who had 
elected Mr. Lincoln, and who, as a partizan duty, in- 
dorsed and sustained his measures, Fremont's procla- 
mation of military emancipation in the first year of 
the war excited the over-hasty zeal of antislavery ex- 
tremists, and developed a small but very active faction 
which harshly denounced the President when Mr. Lin- 
coln revoked that premature and ill-considered mea- 
sure. No matter what the President subsequently did 
about slavery, the Democratic press and partizans al- 
ways assailed him for doing too much, while the Fre- 
mont press and partizans accused him of doing too 
little. 

Meanwhile, personal considerations were playing 
their minor, but not unimportant parts. When Mc- 
Clellan was called to Washington, and during all the 
hopeful promise of the great victories he was expected 
to win, a few shrewd New York Democratic politicians 
grouped themselves about him, and put him in train- 
ing as the future Democratic candidate for President ; 
and the general fell easily into their plans and ambi- 
tions. Even after he had demonstrated his military in- 
capacity, when he had reaped defeat instead of victory, 
and earned humiliation instead of triumph, his partizan 
adherents clung to the desperate hope that though they 
could not win applause for him as a conqueror, they 
might yet create public sympathy in his behalf as a 
neglected and persecuted genius. 

The cabinets of Presidents frequently develop rival 
presidential aspirants, and that of Mr. Lincoln was 
no exception. Considering the strong men who com- 



CHASE'S AMBITION 439 

posed it, the only wonder is that there was so little 
friction among them. They disagreed constantly and 
heartily on minor questions, both with Mr. Lincoln 
and with each other, but their great devotion to the 
Union, coupled with his kindly forbearance, and the 
clear vision which assured him mastery over himself 
and others, kept peace and even personal affection in 
his strangely assorted official family. 

The man who developed the most serious presiden- 
tial aspirations was Salmon P. Chase, his Secretary of 
the Treasury, who listened to and actively encouraged 
the overtures of a small faction of the Republican party 
which rallied about him at the end of the year 1863. 
Pure and disinterested, and devoted with all his ener- 
gies and powers to the cause of the Union, he was yet 
singularly ignorant of current public thought, and ab- 
solutely incapable of judging men in their true rela- 
tions. He regarded himself as the friend of Mr. Lin- 
coln, and made strong protestations to him and to 
others of this friendship, but he held so poor an opinion 
of the President's intellect and character, compared 
with his own, that he could not believe the people blind 
enough to prefer the President to himself. He im- 
agined that he did not covet advancement, and was 
anxious only for the public good ; yet, in the midst of 
his enormous labors found time to write letters to every 
part of the country, protesting his indifference to the 
presidency, but indicating his willingness to accept it, 
and painting pictures so dark of the chaotic state of 
affairs in the government, that the irresistible infer- 
ence was that only he could save the country. From 
the beginning Mr. Lincoln had been aware of this 
quasi-candidacy, which continued all through the win- 
ter. Indeed, it was impossible to remain unconscious 
of it, although he discouraged all conversation on the 



44Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

subject, and refused to read letters relating to it. He 
had his own opinion of the taste and judgment dis- 
played by Mr. Chase in his criticisms of the President 
and his colleagues in the cabinet, but he took no note of 
them. 

"I have determined," he said, "to shut my eyes, so 
far as possible, to everything of the sort. Mr. Chase 
makes a good secretary, and I shall keep him where he 
is. If he becomes President, all right. I hope we may 
never have a worse man." 

And he went on appointing Mr. Chase's partizans 
and adherents to places in the government. Although 
his own renomination was a matter in regard to which 
he refused to talk much, even with intimate friends, 
he was perfectly aware of the true drift of things. In 
capacity of appreciating popular currents Chase was as 
a child beside him; and he allowed the opposition to 
himself in his own cabinet to continue, without ques- 
tion or remark, all the more patiently, because he knew 
how feeble it really was. 

The movement in favor of Mr. Chase culminated 
in the month of February, 1864, in a secret circular 
signed by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas, and widely 
circulated through the Union; which criticised Mr. 
Lincoln's "tendency toward compromises and tempor- 
ary expedients" ; explained that even if his reelection 
were desirable, it was practically impossible in the face 
of the opposition that had developed ; and lauded Chase 
as the statesman best fitted to rescue the country from 
present perils and guard it against future ills. Of 
course copies of this circular soon reached the White 
House, but Mr. Lincoln refused to look at them, and 
they accumulated unread in the desk of his secretary. 
Finally, it got into print, whereupon Mr. Chase wrote 
to the President to assure him he had no knowledge of 



CLEVELAND CONVENTION 441 

the letter before seeing it in the papers. To this Mr. 
Lincoln replied : 

I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance 
of the letter, because I had had knowledge of Mr. 
Pomeroy's committee, and of secret issues which I sup- 
posed came from it, . . . for several weeks. I 
have known just as little of these things as my friends 
have allowed me to know. ... I fully concur 
with you that neither of us can be justly held respon- 
sible for what our respective friends may do without 
our instigation or countenance. . . . Whether 
you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Depart- 
ment is a question which I will not allow myself to con- 
sider from any standpoint other than my judgment of 
the public service, and, in that view, I do not perceive 
occasion for a change." 

Even before the President wrote this letter, Mr. 
Chase's candidacy had passed out of sight. In fact, 
it never really existed save in the imagination of the 
Secretary of the Treasury and a narrow circle of his 
adherents. lie was by no means the choice of the body 
of radicals who were discontented with Mr. Lincoln 
because of his deliberation in dealing with the slavery 
question, or of those others who thought he was going 
entirely too fast and too far. 

Both these factions, alarmed at the multiplying signs 
which foretold his triumphant renomination, issued 
calls for a mass convention of the people, to meet at 
Cleveland, Ohio, on May 31, a week before the as- 
sembling of the Republican national convention at 
Baltimore, to unite in a last attempt to stem the tide 
in his favor. Democratic newspapers naturally made 
much of this, heralding it as a hopeless split in the 
Republican ranks, and printing fictitious despatches 
from Cleveland reporting that city thronged with in- 



442 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

fluential and earnest delegates. Far from this being 
the case, there was no crowd and still less enthusiasm. 
Up to the very day of its meeting no place was pro- 
vided for the sessions of the convention, which finally 
came together in a small hall whose limited capacity 
proved more than ample for both delegates and specta- 
tors. Though organization was delayed nearly two 
hours in the vain hope that more delegates would ar- 
rive, the men who had been counted upon to give char- 
acter to the gathering remained notably absent. The 
delegates prudently refrained from counting their mea- 
ger number, and after preliminaries of a more or less 
farcical nature, voted for a platform differing little 
from that afterward adopted at Baltimore, listened to 
the reading of a vehement letter from Wendell Phillips 
denouncing Mr. Lincoln's administration and counsel- 
ing the choice of Fremont for President, nominated 
that general by acclamation, with General John Coch- 
rane of New York for his running-mate, christened 
themselves the "Radical Democracy," and adjourned. 

The press generally greeted the convention and its 
work with a chorus of ridicule, though certain Demo- 
cratic newspapers, from motives harmlessly transpar- 
ent, gave it solemn and unmeasured praise. General 
Fremont, taking his candidacy seriously, accepted the 
nomination, but three months later, finding no response 
from the public, withdrew from the contest. 

At this fore-doomed Cleveland meeting a feeble at- 
tempt had been made by the men who considered Mr. 
Lincoln too radical, to nominate General Grant for 
President, instead of Fremont; but he had been de- 
nounced as a Lincoln hireling, and his name uncere- 
moniously swept aside. During the same week another 
effort in the same direction was made in New York, 
though the committee having the matter in charge 



LETTER TO CONKLING 443 

made no public avowal of its intention beforehand, 
merely calling a meeting to express the gratitude of 
the country to the general for his signal services; and 
even inviting Mr. Lincoln to take part in the proceed- 
ings. This he declined to do, but wrote: 

"I approve, nevertheless, whatever may tend to 
strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble 
armies now under his direction. My previous high es- 
timate of General Grant has been maintained and 
heightened by what has occurred in the remarkable 
campaign he is now conducting, while the magni- 
tude and difficulty of the task before him do not 
prove less than I expected. He and his brave soldiers 
are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust 
that at your meeting you will so shape your good words 
that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his 
and their support." 

With such gracious approval of the movement the 
meeting naturally fell into the hands of the Lincoln 
men. General Grant neither at this time nor at any 
other, gave the least countenance to the efforts which 
were made to array him in political opposition to the 
President. 

These various attempts to discredit the name of Mr. 
Lincoln and nominate some one else in his place caused 
hardly a ripple on the great current of public opinion. 
Death alone could have prevented his choice by the 
Union convention. So absolute and universal was the 
tendency that most of the politicians made no effort 
to direct or guide it; they simply exerted themselves 
to keep in the van and not be overwhelmed. The con- 
vention met on June 7. but irregular nominations of 
Mr. Lincoln for President had begun as early as Jan- 
uary 6, when the first State convention of the year was 
held in New Hampshire. 



444 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

From one end of the country to the other such spon- 
taneous nominations had joyously echoed his name. 
Only in Missouri did it fail of overwhelming adhesion, 
and even in the Missouri Assembly the resolution in 
favor of his renomination was laid upon the table by a 
majority of only eight. The current swept on irresis- 
tibly throughout the spring. A few opponents of Mr. 
Lincoln endeavored to postpone the meeting of the 
national convention until September, knowing that 
their only hope lay in some possible accident of the 
summer. But though supported by so powerful an in- 
fluence as the New York "Tribune," the National Com- 
mittee paid no attention to this appeal. Indeed, they 
might as well have considered the request of a com- 
mittee of prominent citizens to check an impending 
thunderstorm. 

Mr. Lincoln took no measures whatever to promote 
his own candidacy. While not assuming airs of re- 
luctance or bashfulness, he discouraged on the part of 
strangers any suggestion as to his reelection. Among 
his friends he made no secret of his readiness to con- 
tinue the work he was engaged in, if such should be 
the general wish. "A second term would be a great 
honor and a great labor, which together, perhaps, I 
would not decline if tendered," he wrote Elihu B. 
Washburne. He not only opposed no obstacle to the 
ambitions of Chase, but received warnings to beware of 
Grant in the same serene manner, answering tranquilly, 
"If he takes Richmond, let him have it." And he dis- 
couraged office-holders, civil or military, who showed 
any special zeal in his behalf. To General Schurz, who 
wrote asking permission to take an active part in the 
presidential campaign, he replied : 

"Allow me to suggest that if you wish to remain in 
the military service, it is very dangerous for you to get 



LETTERS TO SCHURZ 445 

temporarily out of it; because, with a major-general 
once out, it is next to impossible for even the Presi- 
dent to get him in again. ... Of course I would 
be very glad to have your service for the country in 
the approaching political canvass ; but I fear we cannot 
properly have it without separating you from the 
military." And in a later letter he added: "I perceive 
no objection to your making a political speech when 
you are where one is to be made; but quite surely, 
speaking in the North and fighting in the South at 
the same time are not possible; nor could I be justified 
to detail any officer to the political campaign during 
its continuance and then return him to the army." 

Not only did he firmly take this stand as to his own 
nomination, but enforced it even more rigidly in cases 
where he learned that Federal office-holders were work- 
ing to defeat the return of certain Republican congress- 
men. In several such instances he wrote instructions 
of which the following is a type : 

"Complaint is made to me that you are using your 
official power to defeat Judge Kelley's renomination 
to Congress. . . . The correct principle, I think, 
is that all our friends should have absolute freedom of 
choice among our friends. My wish, therefore, is that 
you will do just as you think fit with your own suf- 
frage in the case, and not constrain any of your sub- 
ordinates to do other than as he thinks fit with his." 

He made, of course, no long speeches during the 
campaign, and in his short addresses, at Sanitary Fairs, 
in response to visiting delegations, or on similar oc- 
casions where custom and courtesy decreed that he 
must say something, preserved his mental balance un- 
disturbed, speaking heartily and to the point, but skil- 
fully avoiding the perils that beset the candidate who 
talks. 



446 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

When at last the Republican convention came to- 
gether on June 7, 1864, it had less to do than any other 
convention in our political history; for its delegates 
were bound by a peremptory mandate. It was opened 
by brief remarks from Senator Morgan of New York, 
whose significent statement that the convention would 
fall far short of accomplishing its great mission unless 
it declared for a Constitutional amendment prohibit- 
ing African slavery, was loudly cheered. In their 
speeches on taking the chair, both the temporary chair- 
man, Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge of Kentucky, and 
the permanent chairman, William Dennison of Ohio, 
treated Mr. Lincoln's nomination as a foregone conclu- 
sion, and the applause which greeted his name showed 
that the delegates did not resent this disregard of cus- 
tomary etiquette. There were, in fact, but three tasks 
before the convention — to settle the status of con- 
testing delegations, to agree upon a platform, and to 
nominate a candidate for Vice-President. 

The platform declared in favor of crushing rebellion 
and maintaining the integrity of the Union, commend- 
ing the government's determination to enter into no 
compromise with the rebels. It applauded President 
Lincoln's patriotism and fidelity in the discharge of 
his duties, and stated that only those in harmony with 
"these resolutions" ought to have a voice in the ad- 
ministration of the government. This, while intended 
to win support of radicals throughout the Union, was 
aimed particularly at Postmaster General Blair, who 
had made many enemies. It approved all acts directed 
against slavery; declared in favor of a constitutional 
amendment forever abolishing it; claimed full protec- 
tion of the laws of war for colored troops; expressed 
gratitude to the soldiers and sailors of the Union ; pro- 
nounced in favor of encouraging foreign immigration ; 



LINCOLN RENOMINATED 447 

of building a Pacific railway ; of keeping inviolate the 
faith of the nation, pledged to redeem the national 
debt; and vigorously reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine. 

Then came the nominations. The only delay in reg- 
istering the will of the convention occurred as a conse- 
quence of the attempt of members to do it by irregular 
and summary methods. When Mr. Delano of Ohio 
made the customary motion to proceed to the nomi- 
nation, Simon Cameron moved as a substitute the re- 
nomination of Lincoln and Hamlin by acclamation. 
A long wrangle ensued on the motion to lay this sub- 
stitute on the table, which was finally brought to an 
end by the cooler heads, who desired that whatever 
opposition to Mr. Lincoln there might be in the con- 
vention should have fullest opportunity of expression. 
The nominations, therefore, proceeded by call of States 
in the usual way. The interminable nominating- 
speeches of recent years had not yet come into fashion. 
B. C. Cook, the chairman of the Illinois delegation, 
merely said : 

''The State of Illinois again presents to the loyal 
people of this nation for President of the United States, 
Abraham Lincoln — God bless him!" 

Others, who seconded the nomination, were equally 
brief. Every State gave its undivided vote for Lin- 
coln, with the exception of Missouri, which cast its 
vote, under positive instructions, as the chairman 
stated, for Grant. But before the result was an- 
nounced, John F. Hume of Missouri moved that Mr. 
Lincoln's nomination be declared unanimous. This 
could not be done until the result of the balloting was 
made known — four hundred and eighty-four for Lin- 
coln, twenty-two for Grant. Missouri then changed 
its vote, and the secretary read the grand total of five 
hundred and six for Lincoln ; the announcement being 



448 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

greeted with a storm of cheering which lasted many 
minutes. 

The principal names mentioned for the vice-presi- 
dency were Hannibal Hamlin, the actual incumbent; 
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee; and Daniel S. Dick- 
inson of New York. Besides these, General L. H. 
Rousseau had the vote of his own State — Kentucky. 
The radicals of Missouri favored General B. F. Butler, 
who had a few scattered votes also from New England. 
Among the principal candidates, however, the voters 
were equally enough divided to make the contest ex- 
ceedingly spirited and interesting. 

For several days before the convention met Mr. Lin- 
coln had been besieged by inquiries as to his personal 
wishes in regard to his associate on the ticket. He had 
persistently refused to give the slightest intimation of 
such wish. His private secretary, Mr. Nicolay, who 
was at Baltimore in attendance at the convention, was 
well acquainted with this attitude; but at last, over- 
borne by the solicitations of the chairman of the Illinois 
delegation, who had been perplexed at the advocacy of 
Joseph Holt by Leonard Swett, one of the President's 
most intimate friends, Mr. Nicolay wrote to Mr. Hay, 
who had been left in charge of the executive office in 
his absence : 

"Cook wants to know, confidentially, whether Swett 
is all right ; whether in urging Holt for Vice-President 
he reflects the President's wishes ; whether the President 
has any preference, either personal or on the score of 
policy; or whether he wishes not even to interfere by 
a confidential intimation. . . . Please get this in- 
formation for me, if possible." 

The letter was shown to the President, who indorsed 
upon it: 

"Swett is unquestionably all right. Mr. Holt is a 



JOHNSON VICE-PRESIDENT 449 

good man, but I had not heard or thought of him for 
V. P. Wish not to interfere about V. P. Cannot in- 
terfere about platform. Convention must judge for 
itself." 

This positive and final instruction was sent at once 
to Mr. Nicolay, and by him communicated to the Presi- 
dent's most intimate friends in the convention. It was 
therefore with minds absolutely untrammeled by even 
any knowledge of the President's wishes that the con- 
vention went about its work of selecting his associate 
on the ticket. It is altogether probable that the ticket 
of i860 would have been nominated without a contest 
had it not been for the general impression, in and out of 
the convention, that it would be advisable to select as 
a candidate for the vice-presidency a war Democrat. 
Mr. Dickinson, while not putting himself forward as 
a candidate, had sanctioned the use of his name on 
the special ground that his candidacy might attract 
to the support of the Union party many Democrats 
who would have been unwilling to support a ticket 
avowedly Republican; but these considerations weighed 
with still greater force in favor of Mr. Johnson, who 
was not only a Democrat, but also a citizen of a slave 
State. The first ballot showed that Mr. Johnson had 
received two hundred votes, Mr. Hamlin one hundred 
and fifty, and Mr. Dickinson one hundred and eight ; 
and before the result was announced almost the whole 
convention turned their votes to Johnson ; whereupon 
his nomination was declared unanimous. The work 
was so quickly done that Mr. Lincoln received notice 
of the action of the convention only a few minutes after 
the telegram announcing his own renomination had 
reached him. 

Replying next day to a committee of notification, he 
said in part : 



45o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"I will neither conceal my gratification nor restrain 
the expression of my gratitude that the Union people, 
through their convention, in the continued effort to 
save and advance the nation, have deemed me not un- 
worthy to remain in my present position. I know no 
reason to doubt that I shall accept the nomination ten- 
dered; and yet, perhaps I should not declare definitely 
before reading and considering what is called the plat- 
form. I will say now, however, I approve the declara- 
tion in favor of so amending the Constitution as to 
prohibit slavery throughout the nation. When the 
people in revolt, with a hundred days of explicit notice 
that they could within those days resume their alle- 
giance without the overthrow of their institutions, and 
that they could not resume it afterward, elected to stand 
out, such amendment to the Constitution as is now pro- 
posed became a fitting and necessary conclusion to the 
final success of the Union cause. ... In the joint 
names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it 
legal form and practical effect." 

In his letter of June 29, formally accepting the nom- 
ination, the President observed the same wise rule of 
brevity which he had followed four years before. He 
made but one specific reference to any subject of dis- 
cussion. While he accepted the convention's resolution 
reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine, he gave the conven- 
tion and the country distinctly to understand that he 
stood by the action already adopted by himself and 
the Secretary of State. He said : 

"There might be misunderstanding were I not to say 
that the position of the government in relation to the 
action of France in Mexico, as assumed through the 
State Department and approved and indorsed by the 
convention among the measures and acts of the Execu- 
tive, will be faithfully maintained so long as the state 



MEXICO 45 1 

of facts shall leave that position pertinent and appli- 
cable." 

This resolution, which was, in truth, a more vigor- 
ous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine than the author 
of that famous tenet ever dreamed of making, had been 
introduced in the convention by the radicals as a covert 
censure of Mr. Lincoln's attitude toward the French 
invasion of our sister republic; but through skilful 
wording of the platform had been turned by his friends 
into an indorsement of the administration. 

And, indeed, this was most just, since from the be- 
ginning President Lincoln and Mr. Seward had done 
all in their power to discourage the presence of foreign 
troops on Mexican territory. When a joint expedition 
by England, France, and Spain had been agreed upon 
to seize certain Mexican ports in default of a money 
indemnity demanded by those countries for outrages 
against their subjects, England had invited the United 
States to be a party to the convention. Instead. Mr. 
Lincoln and Mr. Seward attempted to aid Mexico with 
a sufficient sum to meet these demands, and notified 
Great Britain of their intention to do so, and the 
motives which prompted them. The friendly assis- 
tance came to naught; but as the three powers vigor- 
ously disclaimed any designs against Mexico's territory 
or her form of government, the United States saw no 
necessity for further action, beyond a clear definition 
of its own attitude for the benefit of all the parties. 

This it continued to repeat after England withdrew 
from the expedition, and Spain, soon recalling her 
troops, left Napoleon III to set the Archduke Max- 
imilian on his shadowy throne, and to develop in the 
heart of America his scheme of an empire friendly to 
the South. At the moment the government was un- 
able to do more, though recognizing the veiled hos- 



452 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tility of Europe which thus manifested itself in a 
movement on what may be called the right flank of 
the republic. While giving utterance to no expressions 
of indignation at the aggressions, or of gratification 
at disaster which met the aggressor, the President and 
Mr. Seward continued to assert, at every proper oppor- 
tunity, the adherence of the American government to 
its traditional policy of discouraging European inter- 
vention in the affairs of the New World. 



XXXII 

The Bogus Proclamation — The Wade-Davis Manifesto — 
Resignation of Mr. Chase — Fcsscnden Succeeds Him 
— The Greeley Peace Conference — Jaqness-Gilmore 
Mission — Letter of Raymond — Bad Outlook for the 
Election — Mr. Lincoln on the Issues of the Campaign 
— President's Secret Memorandum — Meeting of Demo- 
cratic National Convention — McClellan Nominated — 
His Letter of Acceptance — Lincoln Reelected — His 
Speech on Night of Election — The Electoral Vote — 
Annual Message of December 6, 1864 — Resignation of 
McClellan from the Army 

THE seizure of the New York "Journal of Com- 
merce" and New York "World," in May, 1864, 
for publishing a forged proclamation calling for four 
hundred thousand more troops, had caused great excite- 
ment among the critics of Mr. Lincoln's administration. 
The terrible slaughter of Grant's opening campaign 
against Richmond rendered the country painfully sensi- 
tive to such news at the moment; and the forgery, 
which proved to be the work of two young Bohemians 
of the press, accomplished its purpose of raising the 
price of gold, and throwing the Stock Exchange into a 
temporary fever. Telegraphic announcement of the im- 
posture soon quieted the flurry, and the quick detec- 
tion of the guilty parties reduced the incident to its 
true rank ; but the fact that the fiery Secretary of War 
had meanwhile issued orders for the suppression of 
both newspapers and the arrest of their editors was 

453 



454 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

neither forgiven nor forgotten. The editors were 
never incarcerated, and the journals resumed publica- 
tion after an interval of only two days, but the incident 
was vigorously employed during the entire summer 
as a means of attack upon the administration. 

Violent opposition to Mr. Lincoln came also from 
those members of both Houses of Congress who dis- 
approved his attitude on reconstruction. Though that 
part of his message of December 8, 1863, relating to 
the formation of loyal State governments in districts 
which had been in rebellion at first received enthu- 
siastic commendation from both conservatives and rad- 
icals, it was soon evident that the millennium had not 
yet arrived, and that in a Congress composed of men 
of such positive convictions and vehement character, 
there were many who would not submit permanently 
to the leadership of any man, least of all to that of one 
so reasonable, so devoid of malice, as the President. 

Henry Winter Davis at once moved that that part 
of the message be referred to a special committee of 
which he was chairman, and on February 15 reported 
a bill whose preamble declared the Confederate States 
completely out of the Union; prescribing a totally dif- 
ferent method of reestablishing loyal State govern- 
ments, one of the essentials being the prohibition of 
slavery. Congress rejected the preamble, but after ex- 
tensive debate accepted the bill, which breathed the 
same spirit throughout. The measure was also finally 
acceded to in the Senate, and came to Mr. Lincoln for 
signature in the closing hours of the session. He laid 
it aside and went on with other business, despite the 
evident anxiety of several friends, who feared his fail- 
ure to indorse it would lose the Republicans many votes 
in the Northwest. In stating his attitude to his cab- 
inet, he said : 



WADE-DAVIS MANIFESTO 455 

"This bill and the position of these gentlemen seem 
to me, in asserting that the insurrectionary States are 
no longer in the Union, to make the fatal admission 
that States, whenever they please, may of their own 
motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Xow 
we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced. If 
that be true, I am not President; these gentlemen are 
not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid 
that question ever since it first began to be mooted, and 
thus to avoid confusion and disturbance in our own 
councils. It was to obviate this question that I ear- 
nestly favored the movement for an amendment to 
the Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the 
Senate and failed in the House. I thought it much 
better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without 
the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends as 
to whether certain States have been in or out of the 
Union during the war — a merely metaphysical ques- 
tion, and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion." 

But though every member of the cabinet agreed with 
him, he foresaw the importance of the step he had 
resolved to take, and its possible disastrous conse- 
quences to himself. When some one said that the 
threats of the radicals were without foundation, and 
that the people would not bolt their ticket on a ques- 
tion of metaphysics, he answered : 

"If they choose to make a point upon this, I do not 
doubt that they can do harm. They have never been 
friendly to me. At all events, I must keep some 
consciousness of being somewhere near right. I 
must keep some standard or principle fixed within 
myself." 

Convinced, after fullest deliberation, that the bill 
was too restrictive in its provisions, and yet unwilling 
to reject whatever of practical good might be accom- 



456 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

plished by it, he disregarded precedents, and acting 
on his lifelong rule of taking the people into his con- 
fidence, issued a proclamation on July 8, giving a copy 
of the bill of Congress, reciting the circumstances 
under which it was passed, and announcing that while 
he was unprepared by formal approval of the bill to be 
inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration, 
or to set aside the free-State governments already 
adopted in Arkansas and Louisiana, or to declare 
that Congress was competent to decree the abolishment 
of slavery; yet he was fully satisfied with the plan as 
one very proper method of reconstruction, and prom- 
ised executive aid to any State that might see fit to 
adopt it. 

The great mass of Republican voters, who cared little 
for the "metaphysics" of the case, accepted this procla- 
mation, as they had accepted that issued six months 
before, as the wisest and most practicable method of 
handling the question ; but among those already hostile 
to the President, and those whose devotion to the cause 
of freedom was so ardent as to make them look upon 
him as lukewarm, the exasperation which was already 
excited increased. The indignation of Mr. Davis 
and of Mr. Wade, who had called the bill up in the 
Senate, at seeing their work thus brought to nothing, 
could not be restrained; and together they signed and 
published in the New York "Tribune" of August 5 
the most vigorous attack ever directed against the 
President from his own party; insinuating that only 
the lowest motives dictated his action, since by refusing 
to sign the bill he held the electoral votes of the rebel 
States at his personal dictation; calling his approval 
of the bill of Congress as a very proper plan for any 
State choosing to adopt it, a "studied outrage" ; and ad- 
monishing the people to "consider the remedy of these 



RESIGNATION OF MR. CHASE 457 

usurpations, and, having found it," to "fearlessly ex- 
ecute it." 

Congress had already repealed the fugitive-slave 
law, and to the voters at large, who joyfully accepted 
the emancipation proclamation, it mattered very little 
whether the "institution" came to its inevitable end, in 
the fragments of territory where it yet remained, by 
virtue of congressional act or executive decree. This 
tempest over the method of reconstruction had, there- 
fore, little bearing on the presidential campaign, and 
appealed more to individual critics of the President 
than to the mass of the people. 

Mr. Chase entered in his diary : "The President 
pocketed the great bill. . . . He did not venture 
to veto, and so put it in his pocket. It was a con- 
demnation of his amnesty proclamation and of his 
general policy of reconstruction, rejecting the idea of 
possible reconstruction with slavery, which neither 
the President nor his chief advisers have, in my opin- 
ion, abandoned." Mr. Chase was no longer one of 
the chief advisers. After his withdrawal from his 
hopeless contest for the presidency, his sentiments tow- 
ard Mr. Lincoln took on a tinge of bitterness which 
increased until their friendly association in the public 
service became no longer possible ; and on June 30 he 
sent the President his resignation, which was accepted. 
There is reason to believe that he did not expect such 
a prompt severing of their official relations, since more 
than once, in the months of friction which preceded 
this culmination, he had used a threat to resign as 
means to carry some point in controversy. 

Mr. Lincoln, on accepting his resignation, sent the 
name of David Tod of Ohio to the Senate as his suc- 
cessor; but, receiving a telegram from Mr. Tod de- 
clining on the plea of ill health, substituted that of 



458 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

William Pitt Fessenden, chairman of the Senate Com- 
mittee on Finance, whose nomination was instantly 
confirmed and commanded general approval. 

Horace Greeley, editor of the powerful New York 
"Tribune," had become one of those patriots whose dis- 
couragement and discontent led them, during the sum- 
mer of 1864, to give ready hospitality to any sugges- 
tions to end the war. In July he wrote to the President, 
forwarding the letter of one "Wm. Cornell Jewett of 
Colorado," which announced the arrival in Canada of 
two ambassadors from Jefferson Davis with full pow- 
ers to negotiate a peace. Mr. Greeley urged, in his 
over-fervid letter of transmittal, that the President 
make overtures on the following plan of adjustment: 
First. The Union to be restored and declared perpet- 
ual. Second. Slavery to be utterly and forever abol- 
ished. Third. A complete amnesty for all political of- 
fenses. Fourth. Payment of four hundred million 
dollars to the slave States, pro rata, for their slaves. 
Fifth. Slave States to be represented in proportion to 
their total population. Sixth. A national convention 
to be called at once. 

Though Mr. Lincoln had no faith in Jewett's story, 
and doubted whether the embassy had any existence, 
he determined to take immediate action on this proposi- 
tion. He felt the unreasonableness and injustice of Mr. 
Greeley's letter, which in effect charged his adminis- 
tration with a cruel disinclination to treat with the 
rebels, and resolved to convince him at least, and per- 
haps others, that there was no foundation for these 
reproaches. So he arranged that the witness of his 
willingness to listen to any overtures that might come 
from the South should be Mr. Greeley himself, and 
answering his letter at once on July 9, said : 

"If you can find any person, anywhere, professing 



GREELEY PEACE MISSION 459 

to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing, 
for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and 
abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say 
to him he may come to me with you, and that if he 
really brings such proposition he shall at the least have 
safe conduct with the paper (and without publicity, 
if he chooses) to the point where you shall have met 
him. The same if there be two or more persons." 

This ready acquiescence evidently surprised and 
somewhat embarrassed Mr. Greeley, who replied by 
several letters of different dates, but made no motion 
to produce his commissioners. At last, on the fifteenth, 
to end a correspondence which promised to be indefi- 
nitely prolonged, the President telegraphed him : "I 
was not expecting you to send me a letter, but to bring 
me a man or men." Mr. Greeley then went to Niagara, 
and wrote from there to the alleged commissioners, 
Clement C. Clay and James P. Holcombe, offering to 
conduct them to Washington, but neglecting to men- 
tion the two conditions — restoration of the Union 
and abandonment of slavery — laid down in Mr. Lin- 
coln's note of the ninth and repeated by him on the 
fifteenth. Even with this great advantage, Clay and 
Holcombe felt themselves too devoid of credentials to 
accept Mr. Greeley's offer, but replied that they could 
easily get credentials, or that other agents could be 
accredited, if they could be sent to Richmond armed 
with "the circumstances disclosed in this correspon- 
dence." 

This, of course, meant that Air. Lincoln should take 
the initiative in suing the Richmond authorities for 
peace on terms proposed by them. The essential im- 
possibility of these terms was not, however, apparent 
to Mr. Greeley, who sent them on to Washington, so- 
liciting fresh instructions. With unwearied patience, 



460 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mr. Lincoln drew up a final paper, "To Whom it may 
Concern," formally restating his position, and de- 
spatched Major Hay with it to Niagara. This ended 
the conference; the Confederates charging the Presi- 
dent through the newspapers with a "sudden and en- 
tire change of views"; while Mr. Greeley, being at- 
tacked by his colleagues of the press for his action, 
could defend himself only by implied censure of the 
President, utterly overlooking the fact that his own 
original letter had contained the identical propositions 
Mr. Lincoln insisted upon. 

The discussion grew so warm that both he and his 
assailants at last joined in a request to Mr. Lincoln 
to permit the publication of the correspondence. This 
was, of course, an excellent opportunity for the Presi- 
dent to vindicate his own proceeding. But he rarely 
looked at such matters from the point of view of per- 
sonal advantage, and he feared that the passionate, 
almost despairing appeals of the most prominent Re- 
publican editor of the North for peace at any cost, 
disclosed in the correspondence, would deepen the 
gloom in the public mind and have an injurious effect 
upon the Union cause. The spectacle of the veteran 
journalist, who was justly regarded as the leading con- 
troversial writer on the antislavery side, ready to sacri- 
fice everything for peace, and frantically denouncing 
the government for refusing to surrender the contest, 
would have been, in its effect upon public opinion, a dis- 
aster equal to the loss of a great battle. He therefore 
proposed to Mr. Greeley, in case the letters were pub- 
lished, to omit some of the most vehement passages; 
and took Mr. Greeley's refusal to assent to this as a veto 
on their publication. 

It was characteristic of him that, seeing the temper 
in which Mr. Greeley regarded the transaction, he 



JAQUESS-GILMORE MISSION 461 

dropped the matter and submitted in silence to the mis- 
representations to which he was subjected by reason of 
it. Some thought he erred in giving any hearing to 
the rebels ; some criticized his choice of a commissioner ; 
and the opposition naturally made the most of his con- 
ditions of negotiation, and accused him of embarking 
in a war of extermination in the interests of the negro. 
Though making no public effort to set himself right, 
he was keenly alive to their attitude. To a friend he 
wrote : 

"Saying reunion and abandonment of slavery would 
be considered, if offered, is not saying that nothing 
else or less would be considered, if offered. . . . 
Allow me to remind you that no one, having control 
of the rebel armies, or, in fact, having any influence 
whatever in the rebellion, has offered, or intimated, 
a willingness to a restoration of the Union, in any 
event, or on any condition whatever. ... If Jef- 
ferson Davis wishes for himself, or for the benefit of 
his friends at the North, to know what I would do 
if he were to offer peace and reunion, saying nothing 
about slavery, let him try me." 

If the result of Mr. Greeley's Niagara efforts left 
any doubt that peace was at present unattainable, the 
fact was demonstrated beyond question by the pub- 
lished report of another unofficial and volunteer nego- 
tiation which was proceeding at the same time. In 
May, 1863, James F. Jaquess, D.D., a Methodist cler- 
gyman of piety and religious enthusiasm, who had 
been appointed by Governor Yates colonel of an Illi- 
nois regiment, applied for permission to go South, urg- 
ing that by virtue of his church relations he could, 
within ninety days, obtain acceptable terms of peace 
from the Confederates. The military superiors to 
whom he submitted the request forwarded it to Mr. 



462 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln with a favorable indorsement; and the Presi- 
dent replied, consenting that they grant him a fur- 
lough, if they saw fit, but saying: 

"He cannot go with any government authority what- 
ever. This is absolute and imperative." 

Eleven days later he was back again within Union 
lines, claiming to have valuable "unofficial" propo- 
sals for peace. President Lincoln paid no attention 
to his request for an interview, and in course of time 
he returned to his regiment. Nothing daunted, how- 
ever, a year later he applied for and received permis- 
sion to repeat his visit, this time in company with J. R. 
Gilmore, a lecturer and writer, but, as before, expressly 
without instruction or authority from Mr. Lincoln. 
They went to Richmond, and had an extended inter- 
view with Mr. Davis, during which they proposed to 
him a plan of adjustment as visionary as it was un- 
authorized, its central feature being a general election 
to be held over the whole country, North and South, 
within sixty days, on the two propositions, — peace with 
disunion and Southern independence, or peace with 
Union, emancipation, no confiscation, and universal 
amnesty, — the majority vote to decide, and the govern- 
ments at Washington and Richmond to be finally 
bound by the decision. 

The interview resulted in nothing but a renewed dec- 
laration from Mr. Davis that he would fight for sep- 
aration to the bitter end — a declaration which, on the 
whole, was of service to the Union cause, since, to a 
great extent, it stopped the clamor of the peace faction- 
ists during the presidential campaign. Not entirely, 
however. There was still criticism enough to induce 
Henry J. Raymond, chairman of the executive com- 
mittee of the Republican party, to write a letter on 
August 22, suggesting to Mr. Lincoln that he ought 



THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 463 

to appoint a commission in due form to make proffers 
of peace to Davis on the sole condition of acknowledg- 
ing the supremacy of the Constitution; all other ques- 
tions to be settled in a convention of the people of all 
the States. 

Mr. Lincoln answered this patiently and courteously, 
framing, to give point to his argument, an experimental 
draft of instructions with which he proposed, in case 
such proffers were made, to send Mr. Raymond himself 
to the rebel authorities. On seeing these in black and 
white, Raymond, who had come to Washington to 
urge his project, readily agreed with the President 
and Secretaries Seward, Stanton, and Fessenden, that 
to carry it out would be worse than losing the presi- 
dential contest : it would be ignominiously surrendering 
it in advance. 

"Nevertheless," wrote an inmate of the White 
House, "the visit of himself and committee here did 
great good. They found the President and cabinet 
much better informed than themselves, and went home 
encouraged and cheered." 

The Democratic managers had called the national 
convention of their party to meet on the fourth of July, 
1864; but after the nomination of Fremont at Cleve- 
land, and of Lincoln at Baltimore, it was thought pru- 
dent to postpone it to a later date, in the hope that 
something in the chapter of accidents might arise to the 
advantage of the opposition. It appeared for a while 
as if this manceuver were to be successful. The mili- 
tary situation was far from satisfactory. The terrible 
fighting of Grant's army in Virginia had profoundly 
shocked and depressed the country; and its movement 
upon Petersburg, so far without decisive results, had 
contributed little hope or encouragement. The cam- 
paign of Sherman in Georgia gave as yet no posi- 



464 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tive assurance of the brilliant results it afterward at- 
tained. The Confederate raid into Maryland and 
Pennsylvania in July was the cause of great annoyance 
and exasperation. 

This untoward state of things in the field of military 
operations found its exact counterpart in the political 
campaign. Several circumstances contributed to di- 
vide and discourage the administration party. The 
resignation of Mr. Chase had seemed to not a few 
leading Republicans a presage of disintegration in 
the government. Mr. Greeley's mission at Niagara 
Falls had unsettled and troubled the minds of many. 
The Democrats, not having as yet appointed a candi- 
date or formulated a platform, were free to devote all 
their leisure to attacks upon the administration. The 
rebel emissaries in Canada, being in thorough concert 
with the leading peace men of the North, redoubled 
their efforts to disturb the public tranquillity, and not 
without success. In the midst of these discouraging 
circumstances the manifesto of Wade and Davis had 
appeared to add its depressing influence to the general 
gloom. 

Mr. Lincoln realized to the full the tremendous is- 
sues of the campaign. Asked in August by a friend 
who noted his worn looks, if he could not go away for 
a fortnight's rest, he replied : 

"I cannot fly from my thoughts — my solicitude for 
this great country follows me wherever I go. I do not 
think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not 
free from these infirmities, but I cannot but feel that 
the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided 
in November. There is no program offered by any 
wing of the Democratic party, but that must result in 
the permanent destruction of the Union." 

"But, Mr. President," his friend objected, "General 



THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 465 

McClellan is in favor of crushing out this rebellion by 
force. He will be the Chicago candidate." 

"Sir, the slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove 
to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed 
by Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the 
white men of the North to do it. There are now in 
the service of the United States nearly one hundred 
and fifty thousand able-bodied colored men, most of 
them under arms, defending and acquiring Union ter- 
ritory. The Democratic strategy demands that these 
forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated 
by restoring them to slavery. . . . You cannot 
conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate 
success ; and the experience of the present war proves 
their success is inevitable if you Ming the compulsory 
labor of millions of black men into their side of the 
scale. . . . Abandon all the posts now garrisoned 
by black men, take one hundred and fifty thousand 
men from our side and put them in the battle-field or 
corn-field against us, and we would be compelled to 
abandon the war in three weeks. . . . My en- 
emies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the 
sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am President 
it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restor- 
ing the Union. But no human power can subdue this 
rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy 
and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral 
and physical forces of the rebellion. . . . Let my 
enemies prove to the country that the destruction of 
slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. 
I will abide the issue." 

The political situation grew still darker. When at 
last, toward the end of August, the general gloom had 
enveloped even the President himself, his action was 
most original and characteristic. Feeling that the 



466 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

campaign was going against him, he made up his mind 
deliberately as to the course he should pursue, and laid 
down for himself the action demanded by his convic- 
tion of duty. He wrote on August 23 the following 
memorandum : 

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems ex- 
ceedingly probable that this administration will not be 
reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate 
with the President-elect as to save the Union between 
the election and the inauguration, as he will have se- 
cured his election on such ground that he cannot pos- 
sibly save it afterwards." 

He then folded and pasted the sheet in such manner 
that its contents could not be read, and as the cabinet 
came together he handed this paper to each member 
successively, requesting them to write their names 
across the back of it. In this peculiar fashion he 
pledged himself and the administration to accept 
loyally the anticipated verdict of the people against 
him, and to do their utmost to save the Union in 
the brief remainder of his term of office. He gave 
no intimation to any member of his cabinet of the 
nature of the paper they had signed until after his 
reelection. 

The Democratic convention was finally called to 
meet in Chicago on August 29. Much had been ex- 
pected by the peace party from the strength and au- 
dacity of its adherents in the Northwest; and, indeed, 
the day of the meeting of the convention was actually 
the date appointed by rebel emissaries in Canada for 
an outbreak which should effect that revolution in the 
northwestern States which had long been their chimer- 
ical dream. This scheme of the American Knights, 
however, was discovered and guarded against through 
the usual treachery of some of their members; and it 



McCLELLAN NOMINATED 467 

is doubtful if the Democrats reaped any real, perma- 
nent advantage from the delay of their convention. 

On coming together, the only manner in which the 
peace men and war Democrats could arrive at an agree- 
ment was by mutual deception. The war Democrats, 
led by the delegation from New York, were working 
for a military candidate; while the peace Democrats, 
under the leadership of Vallandigham, who had re- 
turned from Canada and was allowed to remain at 
large through the half-contemptuous and half-calcu- 
lated leniency of the government he defied, bent all 
their energies to a clear statement of their principles 
in the platform. 

Both got what they desired. General McClellan was 
nominated on the first ballot, and Vallandigham wrote 
the only plank worth quoting in the platform. It as- 
serted : "That after four years of failure to restore 
the Union by the experiment of war, during which 
the Constitution itself has been disregarded 
in every part," public welfare demands "that imme- 
diate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities." It 
is altogether probable that this distinct proposition of 
surrender to the Confederates might have been modi- 
fied or defeated in full convention if the war Demo- 
crats had had the courage of their convictions ; but 
they were so intent upon the nomination of McClellan, 
that they considered the platform of secondary im- 
portance, and the fatal resolutions were adopted with- 
out debate. 

Mr. Vallandigham, having thus taken possession of 
the convention, next adopted the candidate, and put 
the seal of his sinister approval on General McClellan 
by moving that his nomination be made unanimous, 
which was done amid great cheering. George H. 
Pendleton was nominated for Vice-President, and the 



468 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

convention adjourned — not sine die, as is customary, 
but "subject to be called at any time and place the ex- 
ecutive national committee shall designate." The mo- 
tives of this action were not avowed, but it was taken 
as a significant warning that the leaders of the Demo- 
cratic party held themselves ready for any extraor- 
dinary measures which the exigencies of the time might 
provoke or invite. 

The New-Yorkers, however, had the last word, for 
Governor Seymour, in his letter as chairman of the 
committee to inform McClellan of his nomination, as- 
sured him that "those for whom we speak were ani- 
mated with the most earnest, devoted, and prayerful 
desire for the salvation of the American Union"; and 
the general, knowing that the poison of death was in 
the platform, took occasion in his letter of acceptance 
to renew his assurances of devotion to the Un/on, the 
Constitution, the laws, and the flag of his country. 
After having thus absolutely repudiated the platform 
upon which he was nominated, he coolly concluded : 

"Believing that the views here expressed are those 
of the convention and the people you represent, I accept 
the nomination." • 

His only possible chance of success lay, of course, in 
his war record. His position as a candidate on a plat- 
form of dishonorable peace would have been no less des- 
perate than ridiculous. But the stars in their courses 
fought against the Democratic candidates. Even be- 
fore the convention that nominated them, Farragut 
had won the splendid victory of Mobile Bay; during 
the very hours when the streets of Chicago were blaz- 
ing with Democratic torches, Hood was preparing to 
evacuate Atlanta ; and the same newspaper that printed 
Vallandigham's peace platform announced Sherman's 
entrance into the manufacturing metropolis of Georgia. 



LINCOLN REELECTED 469 

The darkest hour had passed; dawn was at hand, and 
amid the thanksgivings of a grateful people, and the 
joyful salutes of great guns, the presidential cam- 
paign began. 

When the country awoke to the true significance of 
the Chicago platform, the successes of Sherman excited 
the enthusiasm of the people, and the Unionists, arous- 
ing from their midsummer languor, began to show 
their confidence in the Republican candidate, the 
hopelessness of all efforts to undermine him became 
evident. 

The electoral contest began with the picket firing 
in Vermont and Maine in September, was continued 
in what might be called the grand guard fighting in 
October in the great States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and 
Indiana, and the final battle took place all along the 
line on November 8. To Mr. Lincoln this was one of 
the most solemn days of his life. Assured of his per- 
sonal success, and made devoutly confident by the 
military successes of the last few weeks that the day of 
peace and the reestablishment of the Union was at hand, 
he felt no elation, and no sense of triumph over his 
opponents. The thoughts that filled his mind were 
expressed in the closing sentences of the little speech he 
made in response to a group of serenaders that greeted 
him when, in the early morning hours, he left the War 
Department, where he had gone on the evening of elec- 
tion to receive the returns : 

"I am thankful to God for this approval of the peo- 
ple ; but, while deeply grateful for this mark of their 
confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is 
free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not 
impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is 
no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give 
thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the peo- 



47o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pie's resolution to stand by free government and the 
rights of humanity." 

Lincoln and Johnson received a popular majority of 
411,281, and two hundred and twelve out of two hun- 
dred and thirty-three electoral votes, only those of New 
Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky, twenty-one in all, 
being cast for McClellan. In his annual message to 
Congress, which met on December 5, President Lin- 
coln gave the best summing up of the results of the 
election that has ever been written : 

"The purpose of the people within the loyal States 
to maintain the integrity of the Union was never more 
firm nor more nearly unanimous than now. . . . 
No candidate for any office whatever, high or low, has 
ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for 
giving up the Union. There have been much im- 
pugning of motives and much heated controversy as to 
the proper means and best mode of advancing the 
Union cause; but on the distinct issue of Union or no 
Union the politicians have shown their instinctive 
knowledge that there is no diversity among the peo- 
ple. In affording the people the fair opportunity of 
showing one to another and to the world this firmness 
and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast 
value to the national cause." 

On the day of election General McClellan resigned 
his commission in the army, and the place thus made 
vacant was filled by the appointment of General Philip 
H. Sheridan, a fit type and illustration of the turn in 
the tide of affairs, which was to sweep from that time 
rapidly onward to the great decisive national triumph. 



XXXIII 

The Thirteenth Amendment — The President's Speech on 
its Adoption — The Two Constitutional Amendments 
of Lincoln s Term — Lincoln on Peace and Slavery in 
his Annual Message of December 6, 1864 — Blair's 
Mexican Project — The Hampton Roads Conference 

A JOINT resolution proposing an amendment to the 
. Constitution prohibiting slavery throughout the 
United States had passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, 
but had failed of the necessary two-thirds vote in the 
I louse. The two most vital thoughts which animated 
the Baltimore convention when it met in June had been 
the renomination of Mr. Lincoln and the success of 
this constitutional amendment. The first was recog- 
nized as a popular decision needing only the formality 
of an announcement by the convention ; and the full 
emphasis of speech and resolution had therefore been 
centered on the latter as the dominant and aggressive 
reform upon which the party would stake its politi- 
cal fortunes in the presidential campaign. Mr. Lin- 
coln had himself suggested to Mr. Morgan the wisdom 
of sounding that key-note in his opening speech before 
the convention; and the great victory gained at the 
polls in November not only demonstrated his sagacity, 
but enabled him to take up the question with confidence 
among his recommendations to Congress in the an- 
nual message of December 6, 1864. Relating the fate 
of the measure at the preceding session, he said: 

"Without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of 
471 



472 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend 
the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the 
present session. Of course the abstract question is 
not changed, but an intervening election shows, almost 
certainly, that the next Congress will pass the measure 
if this does not. Hence there is only a question of time 
as to when the proposed amendment will go to the 
States for their action. And as it is to so go at all 
events, may we not agree that the sooner the better? 
It is not claimed that the election has imposed a duty 
on members to change their views or their votes any 
further than, as an additional element to be considered, 
their judgment may be affected by it. It is the voice 
of the people, now for the first time heard upon the 
question. In a great national crisis like ours, una- 
nimity of action among those seeking a common end 
is very desirable — almost indispensable. And yet no 
approach to such unanimity is attainable unless some 
deference shall be paid to the will of the majority, sim- 
ply because it is the will of the majority. In this case 
the common end is the maintenance of the Union ; and 
among the means to secure that end, such will, through 
the election, is most clearly declared in favor of such 
constitutional amendment." 

The joint resolution was called up in the House on 
January 6, 1865, and general discussion followed from 
time to time, occupying perhaps half the days of that 
month. As at the previous session, the Republicans all 
favored, while the Democrats mainly opposed it; but 
important exceptions among the latter showed what 
immense gains the proposition had made in popular 
opinion and in congressional willingness to recognize 
and embody it. The logic of events had become more 
powerful than party creed or strategy. For fifteen 
years the Democratic party had stood as sentinel and 



THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT 473 

bulwark to slavery, and yet, despite its alliance and 
championship, the "peculiar institution" was being con- 
sumed in the fire of war. It had withered in popular 
elections, been paralyzed by confiscation laws, crushed 
by executive decrees, trampled upon by marching 
Union armies. More notable than all, the agony of 
dissolution had come upon it in its final stronghold — 
the constitutions of the slave States. Local public 
opinion had throttled it in West Virginia, in Missouri, 
in Arkansas, in Louisiana, in Maryland, and the same 
spirit of change was upon Tennessee, and even show- 
ing itself in Kentucky. The Democratic party did not, 
and could not, shut its eyes to the accomplished facts. 

The issue was decided on the afternoon of January 
31, 1865. The scene was one of unusual interest. The 
galleries were filled to overflowing, and members 
watched the proceedings with unconcealed solicitude. 
"Up to noon," said a contemporaneous report, "the 
pro-slavery party are said to have been confident of 
defeating the amendment; and after that time had 
passed, one of the most earnest advocates of the mea- 
sure said: "T is the toss of a copper.'" At four 
o'clock the House came to a final vote, and the roll- 
call showed : yeas, one hundred and nineteen ; nays, 
fifty-six; not voting, eight. Scattering murmurs of 
applause followed affirmative votes from several Dem- 
ocratic members ; but when the Speaker finally an- 
nounced the result, members on the Republican side 
of the House sprang to their feet, and, regardless of 
parliamentary rules, applauded with cheers and hand- 
clappings — an exhibition of enthusiasm quickly echoed 
by the spectators in the crowded galleries, where wav- 
ing of hats and handkerchiefs and similar demonstra- 
tions of joy lasted for several minutes. 

A salute of one hundred guns soon made the oc- 



474 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

casion the subject of comment and congratulation 
throughout the city. On the following night a con- 
siderable procession marched with music to the Ex- 
ecutive Mansion to carry popular greetings to the 
President. In response to their calls he appeared at a 
window and made a brief speech, of which only an 
abstract report was preserved, but which is neverthe- 
less important as showing the searching analysis of 
cause and effect this question had undergone in his 
mind, the deep interest he felt in it, and the far-reach- 
ing consequences he attached to the measure and its 
success : 

"The occasion was one of congratulation to the 
country and to the whole world. But there is a task 
yet before us — to go forward and have consummated 
by the votes of the States that which Congress had 
so nobly begun yesterday. He had the honor to inform 
those present that Illinois had already to-day done the 
work. Maryland was about half through, but he felt 
proud that Illinois was a little ahead. He thought 
this measure was a very fitting, if not an indispensable, 
adjunct to the winding up of the great difficulty. He 
wished the reunion of all the States perfected, and so 
effected as to remove all causes of disturbance in the 
future ; and to attain this end it was necessary that the 
original disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted 
out. He thought all would bear him witness that he 
had never shrunk from doing all that he could to erad- 
icate slavery, by issuing an emancipation proclamation. 
But that proclamation falls far short of what the 
amendment will be when fully consummated. A ques- 
tion might be raised whether the proclamation was le- 
gally valid. It might be urged that it only aided those 
that came into our lines, and that it was inoperative as 
to those who did not give themselves up; or that it 



THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT 475 

would have no effect upon the children of slaves born 
hereafter; in fact, it would be urged that it did not 
meet the evil. But this amendment is a king's cure-all 
for all the evils. It winds the whole thing up. He 
would repeat that it was the fitting, if not the indispen- 
sable, adjunct to the consummation of the great game 
we are playing." 

Widely divergent views were expressed by able con- 
stitutional lawyers as to what would constitute a valid 
ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment; some con- 
tending that ratification by three fourths of the loyal 
States would be sufficient, others that three fourths of 
all the States, whether loyal or insurrectionary, was 
necessary. Mr. Lincoln, in a speech on Louisiana re- 
construction, while expressing no opinion against the 
first proposition, nevertheless declared with great ar- 
gumentative force that the latter "would be unques- 
tioned and unquestionable"; and this view appears to 
have governed the action of his successor. 

As Mr. Lincoln mentioned with just pride, Illinois 
was the first State to ratify the amendment. On De- 
cember 1 8, 1865, Mr. Seward, who remained as Sec- 
retary of State in the cabinet of President Johnson, 
made official proclamation that the legislatures of 
twenty-seven States, constituting three fourths of the 
thirty-six States of the Union, had ratified the amend- 
ment, and that it had become valid as a part of the 
Constitution. Four of the States constituting this 
number — Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkan- 
sas — were those whose reconstruction had been effected 
under the direction of President Lincoln. Six more 
States subsequently ratified the amendment, Texas 
ending the list in February, 1870. 

The profound political transformation which the 
American Republic had undergone can perhaps best 



476 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be measured by contrasting the two constitutional 
amendments which Congress made it the duty of the 
Lincoln administration to submit officially to the States. 
The first, signed by President Buchanan as one of his 
last official acts, and accepted and indorsed by Lincoln 
in his inaugural address, was in these words : 

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution 
which will authorize or give to Congress the power 
to abolish or interfere within any State with the do- 
mestic institutions thereof, including that of persons 
held" to labor or service by the laws of said State." 

Between Lincoln's inauguration and the outbreak of 
war, the Department of State transmitted this amend- 
ment to the several States for their action ; and had the 
South shown a willingness to desist from secession 
and accept it as a peace offering, there is little doubt 
that it would have become a part of the Constitution. 
But the thunder of Beauregard's guns drove away all 
possibility of such a ratification, and within four years 
the Lincoln administration sent forth the amendment 
of 1865, sweeping out of existence by one sentence the 
institution to which it had in its first proposal offered 
a virtual claim to perpetual recognition and tolerance. 
The "new birth of freedom" which Lincoln invoked 
for the nation in his Gettysburg address, was accom- 
plished. 

The closing paragraphs of President Lincoln's mes- 
sage to Congress of December 6, 1864, were devoted 
to a summing up of the existing situation. The verdict 
of the ballot-box had not only decided the continuance 
of a war administration and war policy, but renewed 
the assurance of a public sentiment to sustain its pros- 
ecution. Inspired by this majestic manifestation of 
the popular will, he was able to speak of the future with 
hope and confidence. But with characteristic prudence 



ANNUAL MESSAGE, 1864 477 

and good taste, he uttered no word of boasting, and 
indulged in no syllable of acrimony; on the contrary, 
in terms of fatherly kindness he again offered the re- 
bellious States the generous conditions he had pre- 
viously tendered them. 

"The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, 
as we believe, inexhaustible. The public purpose to re- 
establish and maintain the national authority is un- 
changed, and, as we believe, unchangeable. The man- 
ner of continuing the effort remains to choose. On 
careful consideration of all the evidence accessible, it 
seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the 
insurgent leader could result in any good. He would 
accept nothing short of severance of the Union — pre- 
cisely what we will not and cannot give. His declara- 
tions to this effect are explicit and oft-repeated. 
What is true, however, of him who heads the 
insurgent cause is not necessarily true of those who 
follow. Although he cannot reaccept the Union, they 
can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace 
and reunion. The number of such may increase. 
They can, at any moment, have peace simply by lay- 
ing down their arms and submitting to the national 
authority under the Constitution. Alter so much, 
the government could not, it it would, maintain war 
against them. The loyal people would not sustain or 
allow it. If questions should remain, we would ad- 
just them by the peaceful means of legislation, con- 
ference, courts, and votes, operating only in constitu- 
tional and lawful channels. ... In presenting 
the abandonment of armed resistance to the national 
authority, on the part of the insurgents, as the only 
indispensable condition to ending the war on the part 
of the government, I retract nothing heretofore said 
as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made a year 



478 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ago, that 'While I remain in my present position I 
shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation 
proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person 
who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any 
of the acts of Congress.' If the people should, by 
whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty 
to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must 
be their instrument to perform it. In stating a single 
condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war 
will cease on the part of the government whenever 
it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it." 
The country was about to enter upon the fifth year 
of actual war; but all indications were pointing to a 
speedy collapse of the rebellion. This foreshadowed 
disaster to the Confederate armies gave rise to an- 
other volunteer peace negotiation, which, from the 
boldness of its animating thought and the prominence 
of its actors, assumes a special importance. The vet- 
eran politician Francis P. Blair, Sr., who, from his 
long political and personal experience in Washington, 
knew, perhaps better than almost any one else, the 
individual characters and tempers of Southern leaders, 
conceived that the time had come when he might take 
up the role of successful mediator between the North 
and the South. He gave various hints of his desire 
to President Lincoln, but received neither encourage- 
ment nor opportunity to unfold his plans. "Come to 
me after Savannah falls," was Lincoln's evasive reply. 
On the surrender of that city, Mr. Blair hastened to put 
his design into execution, and with a simple card from 
Mr. Lincoln, dated December 28, saying, "Allow the 
bearer, F. P. Blair, Sr., to pass our lines, go south 
and return," as his only credential, set out for Rich- 
mond. From General Grant's camp he forwarded two 
letters to Jefferson Davis: one, a brief request to be 



BLAIR'S MEXICAN PROJECT 479 

allowed to go to Richmond in search of missing- title 
papers presumably taken from his Maryland home 
during Early's raid ; the other, a longer letter, explain- 
ing the real object of his visit, but stating with the ut- 
most candor that he came wholly unaccredited, save 
for permission to pass the lines, and that he had not 
offered the suggestions he wished to submit in person 
to Mr. Davis to any one in authority at Washington. 

After some delay, he found himself in Richmond, 
and was accorded a confidential interview by the rebel 
President on January 12, 1865, when he unfolded his 
project, which proved to be nothing less than a propo- 
sition that the Union and Confederate armies cease 
fighting each other and unite to drive the French from 
Mexico. He supported this daring idea in a paper of 
some length, pointing out that as slavery, the real cause 
of the war, was hopelessly doomed, nothing now re- 
mained to keep the two sections of the country apart 
except the possible intervention of foreign soldiery. 
Hence, all considerations pointed to the wisdom of 
dislodging the French invaders from American soil, 
and thus baffling "the designs of Napoleon to subject 
our Southern people to the 'Latin race.' " 

"He who expels the Bonaparte-Hapsburg dynasty 
from our southern flank," the paper said further, "will 
ally his name with those of Washington and Jackson 
as a defender of the liberty of the country. If in 
delivering Mexico he should model its States in form 
and principle to adapt them to our Union, and add a 
new southern constellation to its benignant sky while 
rounding off our possessions on the continent at the 
Isthmus, ... he would complete the work of 
Jefferson, who first set one foot of our colossal govern- 
ment on the Pacific by a stride from the Gulf of 
Mexico. ..." 



4 8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"I then said to him, 'There is my problem, Mr. 
Davis; do you think it possible to be solved?' After 
consideration, he said : T think so.' I then said, 'You 
see that I make the great point of this matter that the 
war is no longer made for slavery, but monarchy. You 
know that if the war is kept up and the Union kept 
divided, armies must be kept afoot on both sides, and 
this state of things has never continued long with- 
out resulting in monarchy on one side or the other, and 
on both generally.' He assented to this." 

The substantial accuracy of Mr. Blair's report is con- 
firmed by the memorandum of the same interview 
which Jefferson Davis wrote at the time. In this con- 
versation, the rebel leader took little pains to disguise 
his entire willingness to enter upon the wild scheme 
of military conquest and annexation which could easily 
be read between the lines of a political crusade to rescue 
the Monroe Doctrine from its present peril. If Mr. 
Blair felt elated at having so quickly made a convert 
of the Confederate President, he was further gratified 
at discovering yet more favorable symptoms in his 
official surroundings at Richmond. In the three or 
four days he spent at the rebel capital he found nearly 
every prominent personage convinced of the hopeless 
condition of the rebellion, and even eager to seize 
upon any contrivance to help them out of their direful 
prospects. 

But the government councils at Washington were 
not ruled by the spirit of political adventure. Abraham 
Lincoln had a loftier conception of patriotic duty, and 
a higher ideal of national ethics. His whole interest 
in Mr. Blair's mission lay in the rebel despondency it 
disclosed, and the possibility it showed of bringing 
the Confederates to an abandonment of their resistance. 
Mr. Davis had, indeed, given Mr. Blair a letter, to be 



BLAIR'S SECOND VISIT 481 

shown to President Lincoln, stating his willingness, 
"notwithstanding the rejection of our former offers," 
to appoint a commissioner to enter into negotiations 
"with a view to secure peace to the two countries." 
This was, of course, the old impossible attitude. In 
reply the President wrote Mr. Blair on January 18 the 
following note : 

"Sir: You having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to 
you of the twelfth instant, you may say to him that I 
have constantly been, am now, and shall continue ready 
to receive any agent whom he, or any other influential 
person now resisting the national authority, may in- 
formally send to me, with the view of securing peace to 
the people of our one common country." 

With this, Mr. Blair returned to Richmond, giving 
Mr. Davis such excuses as he could hastily frame why 
the President had rejected his plan for a joint invasion 
of Mexico. Jefferson Davis therefore had only two 
alternatives before him — either to repeat his stubborn 
ultimatum of separation and independence, or frankly 
to accept Lincoln's ultimatum of reunion. The prin- 
cipal Richmond authorities knew, and some of them 
admitted, that their Confederacy was nearly in col- 
lapse. Lee sent a despatch saying he had not two days' 
rations for his army. Richmond was already in a panic 
at rumors of evacuation. Flour was selling at a thou- 
sand dollars a barrel in Confederate currency. The 
recent fall of Fort Fisher had closed the last avenue 
through which blockade-runners could bring in foreign 
supplies. Governor Brown of Georgia was refusing to 
obey orders from Richmond, and characterizing them 
as "despotic." Under such circumstances a defiant cry 
of independence would not reassure anybody; nor, on 
the other hand, was it longer possible to remain silent. 
Mr. Blair's first visit had created general interest ; when 



482 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he came a second time, wonder and rumor rose to fever 
heat. 

Impelled to take action, Mr. Davis had not the cour- 
age to be frank. After consultation with his cabinet, 
a peace commission of three was appointed, consisting 
of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President ; R. M. T. 
Hunter, senator and ex-Secretary of State; and John 
A. Campbell, Assistant Secretary of War — all of them 
convinced that the rebellion was hopeless, but unwill- 
ing to admit the logical consequences and necessities. 
The drafting of instructions for their guidance was a 
difficult problem, since the explicit condition prescribed 
by Mr. Lincoln's note was that he would receive only 
an agent sent him "with the view of securing peace to 
the people of our one common country." The rebel 
Secretary of State proposed, in order to make the in- 
structions "as vague and general as possible," the sim- 
ple direction to confer "upon the subject to which it re- 
lates" ; but his chief refused the suggestion, and wrote 
the following instruction, which carried a palpable con- 
tradiction on its face : 

"In conformity with the letter of Mr. Lincoln, of 
which the foregoing is a copy, you are requested to pro- 
ceed to Washington City for informal conference with 
him upon the issues involved in the existing war, and 
for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries." 

With this the commissioners presented themselves 
at the Union lines on the evening of January 29, but 
instead of showing their double-meaning credential, 
asked admission, "in accordance with an understand- 
ing claimed to exist with Lieutenant-General Grant." 
Mr. Lincoln, being apprised of the application, promptly 
despatched Major Thomas T. Eckert, of the War De- 
partment, with written directions to admit them under 
6afe-conduct, if they would say in writing that they 



HAMPTON ROADS CONFERENCE 483 

came for the purpose of an informal conference on the 
basis of his note of January 18 to Mr. Blair. The com- 
missioners, having- meantime reconsidered the form of 
their application and addressed a new one to General 
Grant which met the requirements, were provisionally 
conveyed to Grant's headquarters; and on January 31 
the President commissioned Secretary Seward to meet 
them, saying in his written instructions : 

"You will make known to them that three things are 
indispensable, to wit : First. The restoration of the 
national authority throughout all the States. Second. 
No receding by the Executive of the United States on 
the slavery question from the position assumed thereon 
in the late annual message to Congress, and in pre- 
ceding documents. Third. No cessation of hostilities 
short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all 
forces hostile to the government. You will inform 
them that all propositions of theirs, not inconsistent 
with the above, will be considered and passed upon in 
a spirit of sincere liberality. You will hear all they 
may choose to say, and report it to me. You will not 
assume to definitely consummate anything." 

Mr. Seward started on the morning of February 1, 
and simultaneously with his departure the President 
repeated to General Grant the monition already sent 
him two days before: "Let nothing which is transpir- 
ing change, hinder, or delay your military movements 
or plans." Major Eckert had arrived while Mr. Sew- 
ard was yet on the way, and on seeing Jefferson Davis's 
instructions, promptly notified the commissioners that 
they could not proceed further without complying 
strictly with President Lincoln's terms. Thus, at half- 
past nine on the night of February 1, their mission was 
practically at an end, though next day they again re- 
canted and accepted the President's conditions in writ- 



484 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing. Mr. Lincoln, on reading Major Eckert's report 
on the morning of February 2, was about to recall 
Secretary Seward by telegraph, when he was shown 
a confidential despatch from General Grant to the 
Secretary of War, stating his belief that the intention 
of the commissioners was good, and their desire for 
peace sincere, and regretting that Mr. Lincoln could 
not have an interview with them. This communication 
served to change his purpose. Resolving not to neglect 
the indications of sincerity here described, he tele- 
graphed at once, "Say to the gentlemen I will meet 
them personally at Fortress Monroe as soon as I can get 
there," and joined Secretary Seward that same night. 
On the morning of February 3, 1865, the rebel 
commissioners were conducted on board the River 
Queen, lying at anchor near Fort Monroe, where Presi- 
dent Lincoln and Secretary Seward awaited them. It 
was agreed beforehand that no writing or memoran- 
dum should be made at the time, so the record of the 
interview remains only in the separate accounts which 
the rebel commissioners wrote out afterward from 
memory, neither Mr. Seward nor President Lincoln 
ever having made any report in detail. In a careful 
analysis of these reports, the first striking feature is 
the difference of intention between the parties. It is 
apparent that Mr. Lincoln went honestly and frankly 
to offer them the best terms he could to secure peace 
and reunion, but to abate no jot of official duty or 
personal dignity; while the main thought of the com- 
missioners was to evade the express condition on 
which they had been admitted to conference, to seek to 
postpone the vital issue, and to propose an armistice 
by debating a mere juggling expedient against which 
they had in a private agreement with one another al- 
ready committed themselves. 



HAMPTON ROADS CONFERENCE 485 

At the first hint of Blair's Mexican project, how- 
ever, Mr. Lincoln firmly disclaimed any responsibility 
for the suggestion, or any intention of adopting it, and 
during the four hours' talk led the conversation con- 
tinually back to the original object of the conference. 
But though he patiently answered the many questions 
addressed him by the commissioners, as to what would 
probably be done on various important subjects that 
must arise at once if the Confederate States consented, 
carefully discriminating in his answers between what 
he was authorized under the Constitution to do as 
Executive, and what would devolve upon coordinate 
branches of the government, the interview came to 
nothing. The commissioners returned to Richmond 
in great disappointment, and communicated the failure 
of their efforts to Jefferson Davis, whose chagrin was 
equal to their own. They had all caught eagerly at the 
hope that this negotiation would somehow extricate 
them from the dilemmas and dangers of their situation. 
Davis took the only course open to him after refusing 
the honorable peace Mr. Lincoln had tendered. He 
transmitted the commissioners' report to the rebel Con- 
gress, with a brief and dry message stating that the 
enemy refused any terms except those the conqueror 
might grant; and then arranged as vigorous an effort 
as circumstances permitted once more to "fire the 
Southern heart." A public meeting was called, where 
the speeches, judging from the meager reports printed, 
were as denunciatory and bellicose as the bitterest Con- 
federate could desire. Davis particularly is repre- 
sented to have excelled himself in defiant heroics. 
"Sooner than we should ever be united again," he 
said, "he would be willing to yield up everything he had 
on earth — if it were possible, he would sacrifice a thou- 
sand lives"; and he further announced his confidence 



486 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that they would yet "compel the Yankees, in less than 
twelve months, to petition us for peace on our own 
terms." 

This extravagant rhetoric would seem merely gro- 
tesque, were it not embittered by the reflection that 
it was the signal which carried many additional thou- 
sands of brave soldiers to death, in continuing a pal- 
pably hopeless military struggle. 



XXXIV 

Blair— Chase Chief Justice— Speed Succeeds Bates — Mc- 
Culloch Succeeds Fessenden — Resignation of Mr. 
Usher — Lincoln's Offer of $400,000,000 — The Second 
Inaugural — Lincoln s Literary Rank — His Last Speech 

THE principal concession in the Baltimore platform 
made by the friends of the administration to their 
opponents, the radicals, was the resolution which 
called for harmony in the cabinet. The President at 
first took no notice, either publicly or privately, of this 
resolution, which was in effect a recommendation that 
he dismiss those members of his council who were stig- 
matized as conservatives; and the first cabinet change 
which actually took place after the adjournment of 
the convention filled the radical body of his supporters 
with dismay, since they had looked upon Mr. Chase as 
their special representative in the government. The 
publication of the Wade-Davis manifesto still further 
increased their restlessness, and brought upon Mr. 
Lincoln a powerful pressure from every quarter to sat- 
isfy radical demands by dismissing Montgomery Blair, 
his Postmaster-General. Mr. Blair had been one of 
the founders of the Republican party, and in the very 
forefront of opposition to slavery extension, but had 
gradually attracted to himself the hostility of all the 
radical Republicans in the country. The immediate 
cause of this estrangement was the bitter quarrel that 
developed between his family and General Fremont in 
Missouri: a quarrel in which the Blairs were un- 
doubtedly right in the beginning, but which broadened 
487 



488 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and extended until it landed them finally in the Dem- 
ocratic party. 

The President considered the dispute one of form 
rather than substance, and having a deep regard, not 
only for the Postmaster-General, but for his brother, 
General Frank Blair, and for his distinguished father, 
was most reluctant to take action against him. Even 
in the bosom of the government, however, a strong 
hostility to Mr. Blair manifested itself. As long as 
Chase remained in the cabinet there was smoldering 
hostility between them, and his attitude toward Seward 
and Stanton was one of increasing enmity. General 
Halleck, incensed at some caustic remarks Blair was 
reported to have made about the defenders of the 
capital after Early's raid, during which the family 
estate near Washington had suffered, sent an angry 
note to the War Department, wishing to know if such 
"wholesale ' denouncement" had the President's sanc- 
tion; adding that either the names of the officers ac- 
cused should be stricken from the rolls, or the "slan- 
derer dismissed from the cabinet." Mr. Stanton sent 
the letter to the President without comment. This 
was too much; and the Secretary received an answer 
on the very same day, written in Mr. Lincoln's most 
masterful manner : 

"Whether the remarks were really made I do not 
know, nor do I suppose such knowledge is necessary to 
a correct response. If they were made, I do not ap- 
prove them; and yet, under the circumstances, I would 
not dismiss a member of the cabinet therefor. I do not 
consider what may have been hastily said in a mo- 
ment of vexation at so severe a loss is sufficient ground 
for so grave a step. ... I propose continuing to 
be myself the judge as to when a member of the cabinet 
shall be dismissed." 



RESIGNATION OF BLAIR 489 

Not content with this, the President, when the cab- 
inet came together, read them this impressive little 
lecture : 

"I must myself be the judge how long to retain in 
and when to remove any of you from his position. It 
would greatly pain me to discover any of you endea- 
voring to procure another's removal, or in any way 
to prejudice him before the public. Such endeavor 
would be a wrong to me, and, much worse, a wrong 
to the country. My wish is that on this subject no 
remark be made nor question asked by any of you, 
here or elsewhere, now or hereafter." 

This is one of the most remarkable speeches ever 
made by a President. The tone of authority is unmis- 
takable. Washington was never more dignified ; Jack- 
son was never more peremptory. 

The feeling against Mr. Blair and the pressure upon 
the President for his removal increased throughout 
the summer. All through the period of gloom and 
discouragement he refused to act, even when he be- 
lieved the verdict of the country likely to go against 
him, and was assured on every side that such a conces- 
sion to the radical spirit might be greatly to his ad- 
vantage. But after the turn had come, and the pro- 
spective triumph of the Union cause became evident, 
he felt that he ought no longer to retain in his cabinet 
a member who, whatever his personal merits, had lost 
the confidence of the great body of Republicans ; and on 
September 9 wrote him a kindly note, requesting his 
resignation. 

Mr. Blair accepted his dismissal in a manner to be 
expected from his manly and generous character, not 
pretending to be pleased, but assuming that the Presi- 
dent had good reason for his action; and, on turning 
over his office to his successor, ex-Governor William 



49Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Dennison of Ohio, went at once to Maryland and en- 
tered into the campaign, working heartily for Mr. 
Lincoln's reelection. 

After the death of Judge Taney in October, Mr. 
Blair for a while indulged the hope that he might be 
appointed chief justice, a position for which his nat- 
ural abilities and legal acquirements eminently fitted 
him. But Mr. Chase was chosen, to the bitter disap- 
pointment of Mr. Blair's family, though even this did 
not shake their steadfast loyalty to the Union cause 
or their personal friendship for the President. Imme- 
diately after his second inauguration, Mr. Lincoln 
offered Montgomery Blair his choice of the Spanish or 
the Austrian mission, an offer which he peremptorily 
though respectfully declined. 

The appointment of Mr. Chase as chief justice had 
probably been decided on in Mr. Lincoln's own mind 
from the first, though he gave no public intimation of 
his decision before sending the nomination to the Sen- 
ate on December 6. Mr. Chase's partizans claimed 
that the President had already virtually promised him 
the place; his opponents counted upon the ex-secre- 
tary's attitude of criticism to work against his appoint- 
ment. But Mr. Lincoln sternly checked all presenta- 
tions of this personal argument; nor were the prayers 
of those who urged him to overlook the harsh and in- 
decorous things Mr. Chase had said of him at all neces- 
sary. To one who spoke in this latter strain the 
President replied : 

"Oh, as to that I care nothing. Of Mr. Chase's 
ability, and of his soundness on the general issues of 
the war, there is, of course, no question. I have only 
one doubt about his appointment. He is a man of un- 
bounded ambition, and has been working all his life 
to become President. That he can never be ; and I fear 



CHASE CHIEF JUSTICE 491 

that if I make him chief justice he will simply become 
more restless and uneasy and neglect the place in his 
strife and intrigue to make himself President. If I 
were sure that he would go on the bench and give 
up his aspirations, and do nothing but make himself a 
great judge, I would not hesitate a moment." 

He wrote out Mr. Chase's nomination with his own 
hand, and sent it to the Senate the day after Congress 
came together. It was confirmed at once, without ref- 
erence to a committee, and Mr. Chase, on learning of 
his new dignity, sent the President a cordial note, 
thanking him for the manner of his appointment, and 
adding: "I prize your confidence and good will more 
than any nomination to office." But Mr. Lincoln's 
fears were better founded than his hopes. Though Mr. 
Chase took his place on the bench with a conscientious 
desire to do his whole duty in his great office, he could 
not dismiss the political affairs of the country from his 
mind, and still considered himself called upon to coun- 
teract the mischievous tendencies of the President to- 
ward conciliation and hasty reconstruction. 

The reorganization of the cabinet went on by grad- 
ual disintegration rather than by any brusque or even 
voluntary action on the part of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. 
Bates, the attorney-general, growing weary of the la- 
bors of his official position, resigned toward the end 
of Xovember. Mr. Lincoln, on whom the claim of 
localities always had great weight, unable to decide 
upon another Missourian fitted for the place, offered 
it to Joseph Holt of Kentucky, who declined, and then 
to James Speed, also a Kentuckian of high profes- 
sional and social standing, the brother of his early 
friend Joshua F. Speed. Soon after the opening of 
the new year, Mr. Fessenden, having been again elected 
to the Senate from Maine, resigned his office as Secre- 



492 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tary of the Treasury. The place thus vacated instantly 
excited a wide and spirited competition of recommen- 
dations. The President wished to appoint Governor 
Morgan of New York, who declined, and the choice 
finally fell upon Hugh McCulloch of Indiana, who had 
made a favorable record as comptroller of the cur- 
rency. Thus only two of Mr. Lincoln's original cab- 
inet, Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles, were in office at the 
date of his second inauguration; and still another 
change was in contemplation. Mr. Usher of Indiana, 
who had for some time discharged the duties of Secre- 
tary of the Interior, desiring, as he said, to relieve the 
President from any possible embarrassment which 
might arise from the fact that two of his cabinet were 
from the same State, sent in his resignation, which 
Mr. Lincoln indorsed "To take effect May 15, 1865." 

The tragic events of the future were mercifully hid- 
den. Mr. Lincoln, looking forward to four years more 
of personal leadership, was planning yet another gen- 
erous offer to shorten the period of conflict. His talk 
with the commissioners at Hampton Roads had prob- 
ably revealed to him the undercurrent of their hopeless- 
ness and anxiety ; and he had told them that personally 
he would be in favor of the government paying a liberal 
indemnity for the loss of slave property, on absolute 
cessation of the war and the voluntary abolition of 
slavery by the Southern States. 

This was indeed going to the extreme of magnanim- 
ity; but Mr. Lincoln remembered that the rebels, not- 
withstanding all their offenses and errors, were yet 
American citizens, members of the same nation, bro- 
thers of the same blood. He remembered, too, that 
the object of the war, equally with peace and freedom, 
was the maintenance of one government and the per- 
petuation of one Union. Not only must hostilities 



LINCOLN'S OFFER 493 

cease, but dissension, suspicion, and estrangement be 
eradicated. Filled with such thoughts and purposes, 
he spent the day after his return from Hampton Roads 
in considering and perfecting a new proposal, designed 
as a peace offering to the States in rebellion. On the 
evening of February 5, 1865, he called his cabinet to- 
gether, and read to them the draft of a joint resolu- 
tion and proclamation embodying this idea, offering 
the Southern States four hundred million dollars, or 
a sum equal to the cost of the war for two hundred 
days, on condition that hostilities cease by the first of 
April, 1865; to be paid in six per cent, government 
bonds, pro rata on their slave populations as shown 
by the census of i860 — one half on April 1, the other 
half only upon condition that the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment be ratified by a requisite number of States before 
July 1, 1865. 

It turned out that he was more humane and liberal 
than his constitutional advisers. The indorsement in 
his own handwriting on the manuscript draft records 
the result of his appeal and suggestion : 

"February 5, 1865. To-day, these papers, which ex- 
plain themselves, were drawn up and submitted to the 
cabinet, and unanimously disapproved by them. 

"A. Lincoln." 

With the words, "You are all opposed to me," sadly 
uttered, the President folded up the paper and ceased 
the discussion. 

The formal inauguration of Mr. Lincoln for his sec- 
ond presidential term took place at the appointed time, 
March 4, 1865. There is little variation in the simple 
but impressive pageantry with which the official cere- 
mony is celebrated. The principal novelty commented 



494 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

upon by the newspapers was the share which the hith- 
erto enslaved race had for the first time in this public 
and political drama. Civic associations of negro citi- 
zens joined in the procession, and a battalion of negro 
soldiers formed part of the military escort. The wea- 
ther was sufficiently favorable to allow the ceremonies 
to take place on the eastern portico of the Capitol, in 
view of a vast throng of spectators. The central act 
of the occasion was President Lincoln's second inau- 
gural address, which enriched the political literature 
of the Union with another masterpiece, and deserves 
to be quoted in full. He said : 

"Fellow-Countrymen : At this second appearing 
to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less 
occasion for an extended address than there was at 
the first. Then, a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, 
at the expiration of four years, during which public 
declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
point and phase of the great contest which still ab- 
sorbes the attention and engrosses the energies of the 
nation, little that is new could be presented. The 
progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly de- 
pends, is as well known to the public as to myself ; and 
it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging 
to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in 
regard to it is ventured. 

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im- 
pending civil war. All dreaded it — all sought to avert 
it. While the inaugural address was being delivered 
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union 
without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking 
to destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL 495 

Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties 
deprecated war; but one of them would make war 
rather than let the nation survive ; and the other would 
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war 
came. 

"One eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves 
constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew 
that this interest w r as, somehow, the cause of the war. 
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was 
the object for which the insurgents would rend the 
Union, even by war; while the government claimed no 
right to do more than to restrict the territorial en- 
largement of it. Neither party expected for the war 
the magnitude or the duration which it has already 
attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the 
conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict 
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier tri- 
umph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God ; 
and each invokes his aid against the other. It may 
seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the 
sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge not, that 
we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
answered — that of neither has been answered fully. 
The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the 
world because of offenses! for it must needs be that 
offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the 
offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of those offenses which, in the provi- 
dence of God. must needs come, but which, having con- 
tinued through his appointed time, he now wills to 
remove, and that he gives to both North and South 



496 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom 
the offense came, shall we discern therein any depar- 
ture from those divine attributes which the believers 
in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do 
we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty 
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by 
the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, 
so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether.' 

"With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind 
up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 

The address being concluded, Chief-Justice Chase 
administered the oath of office ; and listeners who heard 
Abraham Lincoln for the second time repeat, "I do 
solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office 
of President of the United States, and will, to the best 
of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Consti- 
tution of the United States," went from the impressive 
scene to their several homes with thankfulness and with 
confidence that the destiny of the country and the lib- 
erty of the citizen were in safe keeping. "The fiery 
trial" through which he had hitherto walked showed 
him possessed of the capacity, the courage, and the will 
to keep the promise of his oath. 

Among the many criticisms passed by writers and 
thinkers upon the second inaugural, none will so in- 



LINCOLN'S LITERARY RANK 497 

terest the reader as that of Mr. Lincoln himself, written 
about ten days after its delivery, in the following letter 
to a friend : 

"Dear Mr. Weed : Every one likes a compliment. 
Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, 
and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the latter 
to wear as well as, perhaps better than, anything I have 
produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. 
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has 
been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and 
them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny 
that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth 
which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever 
of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on my- 
self, I thought others might afford for me to tell it." 

Nothing would have more amazed Mr. Lincoln than 
to hear himself called a man of letters; but this age 
has produced few greater writers. Emerson ranks 
him with /Esop; Montalembert commends his style as 
a model for the imitation of princes. It is true that in 
his writings the range of subjects is not great. He was 
chiefly concerned with the political problems of the 
time, and the moral considerations involved in them. 
But the range of treatment is remarkably wide, run- 
ning from the wit, the gay humor, the florid eloquence 
of his stump speeches, to the marvelous sententiousness 
and brevity of the address at Gettysburg, and the sus- 
tained and lofty grandeur of his second inaugural ; 
while many of his phrases have already passed into 
the daily speech of mankind. 

A careful student of Mr. Lincoln's character will 
find this inaugural address instinct with another mean- 
ing, which, very naturally, the President's own com- 



498 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ment did not touch. The eternal law of compensation, 
which it declares and applies to the sin and fall of 
American slavery, in a diction rivaling the fire and dig- 
nity of the old Hebrew prophecies, may, without violent 
inference, be interpreted to foreshadow an intention to 
renew at a fitting moment the brotherly good-will gift 
to the South which has already been treated of. Such 
an inference finds strong corroboration in the sen- 
tences which closed the last public address he ever 
made. On Tuesday evening, April 1 1 , a considerable 
assemblage of citizens of Washington gathered at the 
Executive Mansion to celebrate the victory of Grant 
over Lee. The rather long and careful speech which 
Mr. Lincoln made on that occasion was, however, less 
about the past than the future. It discussed the sub- 
ject of reconstruction as illustrated in the case of Loui- 
siana, showing also how that issue was related to the 
questions of emancipation, the condition of the freed- 
men, the welfare of the South, and the ratification of 
the constitutional amendment. 

"So new and unprecedented is the whole case," he 
concluded, "that no exclusive and inflexible plan can 
safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such 
exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a 
new entanglement. Important principles may and must 
be inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase 
goes, it may be my duty to make some new announce- 
ment to the people of the South. I am considering, and 
shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be 
proper." 

Can any one doubt that this "new announcement" 
which was taking shape in his mind would again have 
embraced and combined justice to the blacks and gen- 
erosity to the whites of the South, with Union and 
liberty for the whole country? 



XXXV 

Depreciation of Confederate Currency — Rigor of Con- 
scription — Dissatisfaction with the Confederate Gov- 
ernment — Lee General-in-Chief — /. E. Johnston Reap- 
pointed to Oppose Sherman s March — Value of Slave 
Property Gone in Richmond — Davis's Recommendation 
of Emancipation — Benjamin's Last Despatch to Slidell 
— Condition of the Army when Lee took Command — 
Lee Attempts Negotiations with Grant — Lincoln's Di- 
rections — Lee and Davis Agree upon Line of Retreat — 
Assault on Fort Stedman — Five Forks — Evacuation of 
Petersburg — Surrender of Richmond — Pursuit of Lee 
— Surrender of Lee — Burning of Richmond — Lincoln 
in Richmond 

FROM the hour of Mr. Lincoln's reelection the Con- 
federate cause was doomed. The cheering of the 
troops which greeted the news from the North was 
heard within the lines at Richmond and at Petersburg ; 
and although the leaders maintained their attitude of 
defiance, the impression rapidly gained ground among 
the people that the end was not far off. The stimulus 
of hope being gone, they began to feel the pinch of 
increasing want. Their currency had become almost 
worthless. In October, a dollar in gold was worth 
thirty-five dollars in Confederate money. With the 
opening of the new year the price rose to sixty dollars, 
and, despite the efforts of the Confederate treasury, 
which would occasionally rush into the market and 
beat down the price of gold ten or twenty per cent. 
a day, the currency gradually depreciated until a hun- 
499 



500 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dred for one was offered and not taken. It was natural 
for the citizens of Richmond to think that monstrous 
prices were being extorted for food, clothing, and sup- 
plies, when in fact they were paying no more than was 
reasonable. To pay a thousand dollars for a barrel 
of flour was enough to strike a householder with ter- 
ror, but ten dollars is not a famine price. High prices, 
however, even if paid in dry leaves, are a hardship 
when dry leaves are not plentiful; and there was 
scarcity even of Confederate money in the South. 

At every advance of Grant's lines a new alarm was 
manifested in Richmond, the first proof of which was 
always a fresh rigor in enforcing the conscription laws 
and the arbitrary orders of the frightened authorities. 
After the capture of Fort Harrison, north of the James, 
squads of guards were sent into the streets with direc- 
tions to arrest every able-bodied man they met. It is 
said that the medical boards were ordered to exempt 
no one capable of bearing arms for ten days. Human 
nature will not endure such a strain as this, and de- 
sertion grew too common to punish. 

As disaster increased, the Confederate government 
steadily lost ground in the confidence and respect of 
the Southern people. Mr. Davis and his councilors 
were doing their best, but they no longer got any credit 
for it. From every part of the Confederacy came com- 
plaints of what was done, demands for what was im- 
possible to do. Some of the States were in a condi- 
tion near to counter-revolution. A slow paralysis was 
benumbing the limbs of the insurrection, and even at 
the heart its vitality was plainly declining. The Con- 
federate Congress, which had hitherto been the mere 
register of the President's will, now turned upon him. 
On January 19 it passed a resolution making Lee gen- 
eral-in-chief of the army. This Mr. Davis might have 



CONDITIONS IN RICHMOND 501 

borne with patience, although it was intended as a no- 
tification that his meddling with military affairs must 
come to an end. But far worse was the bitter necessity 
put upon him as a sequel to this act, of reappointing 
General Joseph E. Johnston to the command of the 
army which was to resist Sherman's victorious march 
to the north. Mr. Seddon, rebel Secretary of War, 
thinking his honor impugned by a vote of the Virginia 
delegation in Congress, resigned. Warnings of serious 
demoralization came daily from the army, and dis- 
affection was so rife in official circles in Richmond 
that it was not thought politic to call public attention 
to it by measures of repression. 

It is curious and instructive to note how the act of 
emancipation had by this time virtually enforced itself 
in Richmond. The value of slave property was gone. 
It is true that a slave was still occasionally sold, at a 
price less than one tenth of what he would have 
brought before the war, but servants could be hired 
of their nominal owners for almost nothing — merely 
enough to keep up a show of vassalage. In effect, any 
one could hire a negro for his keeping — which was all 
that anybody in Richmond, black or white, got for his 
work. Even Mr. Davis had at last become docile to 
the stern teaching of events. In his message of No- 
vember he had recommended the employment of forty 
thousand slaves in the army — not as soldiers, it is true, 
save in the last extremity — with emancipation to come. 

On December 27, Mr. Benjamin wrote his last impor- 
tant instruction to John Slidell, the Confederate com- 
missioner in Europe. It is nothing less than a cry of 
despair. Complaining bitterly of the attitude of for- 
eign nations while the South is fighting the battles of 
England and France against the North, he asks : "Are 
they determined never to recognize the Southern Con- 



502 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

federacy until the United States assent to such action 
on their part?" And with a frantic offer to submit 
to any terms which Europe might impose as the price 
of recognition, and a scarcely veiled threat of making 
peace with the North unless Europe should act speedily, 
the Confederate Department of State closed its four 
years of fruitless activity. 

Lee assumed command of all the Confederate armies 
on February 9. His situation was one of unprecedented 
gloom. The day before he had reported that his troops, 
who had been in line of battle for two days at Hatcher's 
Run, exposed to the bad winter weather, had been with- 
out meat for three days. A prodigious effort was made, 
and the danger of starvation for the moment averted, 
but no permanent improvement resulted. The armies 
of the Union were closing in from every point of the 
compass. Grant was every day pushing his formidable 
left wing nearer the only roads by which Lee could es- 
cape; Thomas was threatening the Confederate com- 
munications from Tennessee; Sheridan was riding 
for the last time up the Shenandoah valley to abolish 
Early; while from the south the redoubtable columns 
of Sherman were moving northward with the steady 
pace and irresistible progress of a tragic fate. 

A singular and significant attempt at negotiation 
was made at this time by General Lee. He was so 
strong in the confidence of the people of the South, 
and the government at Richmond was so rapidly be- 
coming discredited, that he could doubtless have ob- 
tained the popular support and compelled the assent 
of the Executive to any measures he thought proper 
for the attainment of peace. From this it was easy 
for him and for others to come to the wholly errone- 
ous conclusion that General Grant held a similar re- 
lation to the government and people of the United 



LEE'S LETTER TO GRANT 503 

States. General Lee seized upon the pretext of a con- 
versation reported to him by General Longstreet as 
having been held with General E. O. C. Ord under an 
ordinary flag of truce for the exchange of prisoners, 
to address a letter to Grant, sanctioned by Mr. Davis, 
saying he had been informed that General Ord had said 
General Grant would not decline an interview with a 
view "to a satisfactory adjustment of the present un- 
happy difficulties by means of a military convention," 
provided Lee had authority to act. He therefore pro- 
posed to meet General Grant "with the hope that 
. . . it may be found practicable to submit the sub- 
jects of controversy ... to a convention of the 
kind mentioned" ; professing himself "authorized to do 
whatever the result of the proposed interview may ren- 
der necessary." 

Grant at once telegraphed these overtures to Wash- 
ington. Stanton received the despatch at the Capitol, 
where the President was, according to his custom, pass- 
ing the last night of the session of Congress, for the 
convenience of signing bills. The Secretary handed the 
telegram to Mr. Lincoln, who read it in silence. He 
asked no advice or suggestion from any one about him, 
but, taking up a pen, wrote with his usual slowness and 
precision a despatch in Stanton's name, which he 
allowed to Seward, and then handed to Stanton to be 
signed and sent. The language is that of an expe- 
rienced ruler, perfectly sure of himself and of his 
duty : 

"The President directs me to say that he wishes you 
to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be 
for capitulation of General Lee's army, or on some 
minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to 
say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon 
any political questions. Such questions the President 



5o 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no 
military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, you 
are to press to the utmost your military advantages." 

Grant answered Lee that he had no authority to ac- 
cede to his proposition, and explained that General 
Ord's language must have been misunderstood. This 
closed to the Confederate authorities the last avenue 
of hope of any compromise by which the alternative 
of utter defeat or unconditional surrender might be 
avoided. 

Early in March, General Lee visited Richmond for 
conference with Mr. Davis on the measures to be 
adopted in the crisis which he saw was imminent. He 
had never sympathized with the slight Congress had in- 
tended to put upon Mr. Davis when it gave him su- 
preme military authority, and continued to the end to 
treat his President as commander-in-chief of the forces. 
There is direct contradiction between Mr. Davis and 
General Lee as to how Davis received this statement 
of the necessities of the situation. Mr. Davis says he 
suggested immediate withdrawal from Richmond, but 
that Lee said his horses were too weak for the roads 
in their present condition, and that he must wait. Gen- 
eral Lee, on the other hand, is quoted as saying that 
he wished to retire behind the Staunton River, from 
which point he might have indefinitely protracted the 
war, but that the President overruled him. Both 
agreed, however, that sooner or later Richmond must 
be abandoned, and that the next move should be to 
Danville. 

But before he turned his back forever upon the 
lines he had so stoutly defended, Lee resolved to dash 
once more at the toils by which he was surrounded. 
He placed half his army under the command of Gen- 
eral John B. Gordon, with orders to break through 



ASSAULT ON FORT STEDMAN 505 

the Union lines at Fort Stedman and take possession 
of the high ground behind them. A month earlier 
Grant had foreseen some such move on Lee's part, and 
had ordered General Parke to be prepared to meet an 
assault on his center, and to have his commanders 
ready to bring all their resources to bear on the point 
in danger, adding: "With proper alacrity in this re- 
spect, I would have no objection to seeing the enemy 
get through." This characteristic phrase throws the 
strongest light both on Grant's temperament, and on 
the mastery of his business at which he had arrived. 
Under such generalship, an army's lines are a trap into 
which entrance is suicide. 

The assault was made with great spirit at half-past 
four on the morning of March 25. Its initial success 
was due to a singular cause. The spot chosen was a 
favorite point for deserters to pass into the Union 
lines, which they had of late been doing in large num- 
bers. When Gordon's skirmishers, therefore, came 
stealing through the darkness, they were mistaken for 
an unusually large party of deserters, and they over- 
powered several picket-posts without firing a shot. The 
storming party, following at once, took the trenches 
with a rush, and in a few minutes had possession of the 
main line on the right of the fort, and, next, of the fort 
itself. It was hard in the semi-darkness to distin- 
guish friends from foes, and for a time General Parke 
was unable to make headway; but with the growing 
light his troops advanced from every direction to mend 
the breach, and, making short work of the Confederate 
detachments, recaptured the fort, opening a cross-fire 
of artillery so withering that few of the Confederates 
could get back to their own lines. This was, moreover, 
not the only damage the Confederates suffered. Hum- 
phreys and Wright, on the Union left, rightly assum- 



506 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing that Parke could take care of himself, instantly 
searched the lines in their front to see if they had been 
essentially weakened to support Gordon's attack. 
They found they had not, but in gaining this know- 
ledge captured the enemy's intrenched picket-lines in 
front of them, which, being held, gave inestimable ad- 
vantage to the Union army in the struggle of the next 
Week. 

Grant's chief anxiety for some time had been lest 
Lee should abandon his lines; but though burning to 
attack, he was delayed by the same bad roads which 
kept Lee in Richmond, and by another cause. He did 
not wish to move until Sheridan had completed the 
work assigned him in the Shenandoah valley and 
joined either Sherman or the army at Petersburg. On 
March 24, however, at the very moment Gordon was 
making his plans for next day's sortie, Grant issued his 
order for the great movement to the left which was to 
finish the war. He intended to begin on the twenty- 
ninth, but Lee's desperate dash of the twenty-fifth con- 
vinced him that not a moment was to be lost. Sheridan 
reached City Point on the twenty-sixth. Sherman 
came up from North Carolina for a brief visit next 
day. The President was also there, and an interesting 
meeting took place between these famous brothers in 
arms and Mr. Lincoln; after which Sherman went 
back to Goldsboro, and Grant began pushing his army 
to the left with even more than his usual iron energy. 

It was a great army — the result of all the power and 
wisdom of the government, all the devotion of the 
people, all the intelligence and teachableness of the sol- 
diers themselves, and all the ability which a mighty 
war had developed in the officers. In command of all 
was Grant, the most extraordinary military tempera- 
ment this country has ever seen. The numbers of the 



FIVE FORKS 507 

respective armies in this last grapple have been the 
occasion of endless controversy. As nearly as can be 
ascertained, the grand total of all arms on the Union 
side was 124,700; on the Confederate side, 57,000. 

Grant's plan, as announced in his instructions of 
March 24, was at first to despatch Sheridan to de- 
stroy the South Side and Danville railroads, at the 
same time moving a heavy force to the left to insure 
the success of this raid, and then to turn Lee's position. 
But his purpose developed from hour to hour, and be- 
fore he had been away from his winter headquarters one 
day, he gave up this comparatively narrow scheme, 
and adopted the far bolder plan which he carried out to 
his immortal honor. He ordered Sheridan not to go 
after the railroads, but to push for the enemy's right 
rear, writing him : "I now feel like ending the matter. 
. . . We will act all together as one army here, un- 
til it is seen what can be done with the enemy." 

On the thirtieth, Sheridan advanced to Five Forks, 
where he found a heavy force of the enemy. Lee, 
justly alarmed by Grant's movements, had despatched 
a sufficient detachment to hold that important cross- 
roads, and taken personal command of the remainder 
on White Oak Ridge. A heavy rain-storm, beginning 
on the night of the twenty-ninth and continuing more 
than twenty-four hours, greatly impeded the march 
of the troops. On the thirty-first, Warren, working his 
way toward the White Oak road, was attacked by Lee 
and driven back on the main line, but rallied, and in 
the afternoon drove the enemy again into his works. 
Sheridan, opposed by Pickett with a large force of in- 
fantry and cavalry.' was also forced back, fighting 
obstinately, as far as Dinwiddie Court House, from 
which i>< >int he hopefully reported his situation to Grant 
at dark. Grant, more disturbed than Sheridan himself, 



5o8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rained orders and suggestions all night to effect a 
concentration at daylight on that portion of the enemy 
in front of Sheridan; but Pickett, finding himself out 
of position, silently withdrew during the night, and re- 
sumed his strongly intrenched post at Five Forks. 
Here Sheridan followed him on April i, and repeated 
the successful tactics of his Shenandoah valley exploits 
so brilliantly that Lee's right was entirely shattered. 

This battle of Five Forks should have ended the war. 
Lee's right was routed ; his line had been stretched west- 
ward until it broke; there was no longer any hope of 
saving Richmond, or even of materially delaying its 
fall. But Lee apparently thought that even the gain 
of a day was of value to the Richmond government, 
and what was left of his Army of Northern Virginia 
was still so perfect in discipline that it answered with 
unabated spirit every demand made upon it. Grant, 
who feared Lee might get away from Petersburg and 
overwhelm Sheridan on the White Oak road, directed 
that an assault be made all along the line at four o'clock 
on the morning of the second. His officers responded 
with enthusiasm; and Lee, far from dreaming of at- 
tacking any one after the stunning blow he had re- 
ceived the day before, made what hasty preparations 
he could to resist them. 

It is painful to record the hard fighting which fol- 
lowed. Wright, in his assault in front of Forts Fisher 
and Walsh, lost eleven hundred men in fifteen minutes 
of murderous conflict that made them his own; and 
other commands fared scarcely better, Union and Con- 
federate troops alike displaying a gallantry distress- 
ing to contemplate when one reflects that, the war 
being already decided, all this heroic blood was shed in 
vain. The Confederates, from the Appomattox to the 
Weldon road, fell slowly back to their inner line of 



LEE ORDERS EVACUATION 509 

works ; and Lee, watching the formidable advance be- 
fore which his weakened troops gave way, sent a mes- 
sage to Richmond announcing his purpose of concen- 
trating on the Danville road, and made preparations 
for the evacuation which was now the only resort 
left him. 

Some Confederate writers express surprise that Gen- 
eral Grant did not attack and destroy Lee's army on 
April 2 ; but this is a view, after the fact, easy to 
express. The troops on the Union left had been on foot 
for eighteen hours, had fought an important battle, 
marched and countermarched many miles, and were 
now confronted by Longstreet's fresh corps behind 
formidable works, while the attitude of the force under 
Gordon on the south side of the town was such as to 
require the close attention of Parke. Grant, anticipat- 
ing an early retirement of Lee from his citadel, wisely 
resolved to avoid the waste and bloodshed of an imme- 
diate assault on the inner lines of Petersburg. Pie 
ordered Sheridan to get upon Lee's line of retreat ; sent 
1 lumphreys to strengthen him ; then, directing a general 
bombardment for five o'clock next morning, and an as- 
sault at six, gave himself and his soldiers a little of the 
rest they had so richly earned and so seriously needed. 

He had telegraphed during the day to President Lin- 
coln, who was still at City Point, the news as it devel- 
oped from hour to hour. Prisoners he regarded as so 
much net gain : he was weary of slaughter, and wanted 
the war ended with as little bloodshed as possible; and 
it was with delight that he summed up on Sunday 
afternoon: ''The whole captures since the army started 
out gunning will not amount to less than twelve thou- 
sand men, and probably fifty pieces of artillery." 

Lee bent all his energies to saving his army and lead- 
ing it out of its untenable position on the James to a 



5io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

point from which he could effect a junction with John- 
ston in North Carolina. The place selected for this 
purpose was Burkeville, at the crossing of the South 
Side and Danville roads, fifty miles southwest from 
Richmond, whence a short distance would bring him 
to Danville, where the desired junction could be made. 
Even yet he was able to cradle himself in the illusion 
that it was only a campaign that had failed, and that he 
might continue the war indefinitely in another field. 
At nightfall all his preparations were completed, and 
dismounting at the mouth of the road leading to 
Amelia Court House, the first point of rendezvous, 
where he had directed supplies to be sent, he watched 
his troops file noiselessly by in the darkness. By three 
o'clock the town was abandoned; at half-past four it 
was formally surrendered. Meade, reporting the news 
to Grant, received orders to march his army immedi- 
ately up the Appomattox; and divining Lee's inten- 
tions, Grant also sent word to Sheridan to push with 
all speed to the Danville road. 

Thus flight and pursuit began almost at the same 
moment. The swift-footed Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia was racing for its life, and Grant, inspired with 
more than his habitual tenacity and energy, not only 
pressed his enemy in the rear, but hung upon his flank, 
and strained every nerve to get in his front. He did 
not even allow himself the pleasure of entering Rich- 
mond, which surrendered to Weitzel early on the morn- 
ing of the third. 

All that day Lee pushed forward -toward Amelia 
Court House. There was little fighting except among 
the cavalry. A terrible disappointment awaited Lee 
on his arrival at Amelia Court House on the fourth. 
He had ordered supplies to be forwarded there, but his 
half-starved troops found no food awaiting them, 



PURSUIT OF LEE 511 

and nearly twenty-four hours were lost in collecting 
subsistence for men and horses. When he started 
again on the night of the fifth, the whole pursuing 
force was south and stretching out to the west of him. 
Burkeville was in Grant's possession ; the way to Dan- 
ville was barred; the supply of provisions to the south 
cut off. He was compelled to change his route to the 
west, and started for Lynchburg, which he was des- 
tined never to reach. 

It had been the intention to attack Lee at Amelia 
Court House on the morning of April 6, but learning 
of his turn to the west, Meade, who was immediately 
in pursuit, quickly faced his army about and followed. 
A running fight ensued for fourteen miles, the enemy, 
with remarkable quickness and dexterity, halting and 
partly intrenching themselves from time to time, and 
the national forces driving them out of every position ; 
the Union cavalry, meanwhile, harassing the moving 
left flank of the Confederates, and working havoc on 
the trains. They also caused a grievous loss to his- 
tory by burning Lee's headquarters baggage, with all 
its wealth of returns and reports. At Sailor's Creek, 
a rivulet running north into the Appomattox, Ewell's 
corps was brought to bay, and important fighting oc- 
curred ; the day's loss to Lee, there and elsewhere, 
amounting to eight thousand in all, with several of his 
generals among the prisoners. This day's work was 
of incalculable value to the national arms. Sheridan's 
unerring eye appreciated the full importance of it, his 
hasty report ending with the words: "If the thing 
is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender." Grant 
sent the despatch to President Lincoln, who instantly 
replied : 

"Let the thing be pressed." 

In fact, after nightfall of the sixth, Lee's army 



512 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

could only flutter like a wounded bird with one wing 
shattered. There was no longer any possibility of es- 
cape ; but Lee found it hard to relinquish the illusion of 
years, and as soon as night came down he again began 
his weary march westward. A slight success on the 
next day once more raised his hopes ; but his optimism 
was not shared by his subordinates, and a number of 
his principal officers, selecting General Pendleton as 
their spokesman, made known to him on the seventh 
their belief that further resistance was useless, and 
advised surrender. Lee told them that they had yet 
too many men to think of laying down their arms, 
but in answer to a courteous summons from Grant sent 
that same day, inquired what terms he would be willing 
to offer. Without waiting for a reply, he again put his 
men in motion, and during all of the eighth the chase 
and pursuit continued through a part of Virginia green 
with spring, and until then unvisited by hostile armies. 

Sheridan, by unheard-of exertions, at last accom- 
plished the important task of placing himself squarely 
on Lee's line of retreat. About sunset of the eighth, 
his advance captured Appomattox Station and four 
trains of provisions. Shortly after, a reconnaissance 
revealed the fact that Lee's entire army was coming 
up the road. Though he had nothing but cavalry, 
Sheridan resolved to hold the inestimable advantage 
he had gained, and sent a request to Grant to hurry 
up the required infantry support; saying that if it 
reached him that night, they "might perhaps finish the 
job in the morning." He added, with singular pre- 
science, referring to the negotiations which had been 
opened : 'T do not think Lee means to surrender until 
compelled to do so." 

This was strictly true. When Grant replied to Lee's 
question about terms, saying that the only condition 



SURRENDER OF LEE 513 

he insisted upon was that the officers and men surren- 
dered should be disqualified from taking up arms again 
until properly exchanged, Lee disclaimed any inten- 
tion to surrender his army, but proposed to meet Grant 
to discuss the restoration of peace. It appears from his 
own report that even on the night of the eighth he 
had no intention of giving up the fight. He expected 
to find only cavalry before him next morning, and 
thought his remnant of infantry could break through 
while he himself was amusing Grant with platonic dis- 
cussions in the rear. But on arriving at the rendezvous 
he had suggested, he received Grant's courteous but 
decided refusal to enter into a political negotiation, and 
also the news that a formidable force of infantry 
barred the way and covered the adjacent hills and val- 
ley. The marching of the Confederate army was over 
forever, and Lee, suddenly brought to a sense of his 
real situation, sent orders to cease hostilities, and wrote 
another note to Grant, asking an interview for the pur- 
pose of surrendering his army. 

The meeting took place at the house of Wilmer 
McLean, in the edge of the village of Appomattox, on 
April 9, 1865. Lee met Grant at the threshold, and 
ushered him into a small and barely furnished parlor, 
where were soon assembled the leading officers of the 
national army. General Lee was accompanied only 
by his secretary, Colonel Charles Marshall. A short 
conversation led up to a request from Lee for the terms 
on which the surrender of his army would be received. 
Grant briefly stated them, and then wrote them out. 
Men and officers were to be paroled, and the arms, 
artillery, and public property turned over to the offi- 
cer appointed to receive them. 

"This." he added, "will not embrace the side-arms 
of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. 



514 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

This done, each officer and man will be allowed to 
return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United 
States authority so long as they observe their parole 
and the laws in force where they may reside." 

General Grant says in his "Memoirs" that up to the 
moment when he put pen to paper he had not thought 
of a word that he should write. The terms he had 
verbally proposed were soon put in writing, and there 
he might have stopped. But as he wrote a feeling of 
sympathy for his gallant antagonist came over him, and 
he added the extremely liberal terms with which his 
letter closed. The sight of Lee's fine sword suggested 
the paragraph allowing officers to retain their side- 
arms ; and he ended with a phrase he evidently had not 
thought of, and for which he had no authority, which 
practically pardoned and amnestied every man in 
Lee's army — a thing he had refused to consider the day 
before, and which had been expressly forbidden him 
in the President's order of March 3. Yet so great was 
the joy over the crowning victory, and so deep the 
gratitude of the government and people to Grant and 
his heroic army, that his terms were accepted as he 
wrote them, and his exercise of the Executive preroga- 
tive of pardon entirely overlooked. It must be noticed 
here, however, that a few days later it led the greatest 
of Grant's generals into a serious error. 

Lee must have read the memorandum with as much 
surprise as gratification. He suggested and gained 
another important concession — that those of the cav- 
alry and artillery who owned their own horses should 
be allowed to take them home to put in their crops ; and 
wrote a brief reply accepting the terms. He then 
remarked that his army was in a starving condition, 
and asked Grant to provide them with subsistence and 
forage; to which he at once assented, inquiring for 



BURNING OF RICHMOND 515 

how many men the rations would be wanted. Lee an- 
swered, "About twenty-five thousand"; and orders 
were given to issue them. The number turned out to 
be even greater, the paroles signed amounting to 
twenty-eight thousand two hundred and thirty-one. 
If we add to this the captures made during the preced- 
ing week, and the thousands who deserted the failing 
cause at every by-road leading to their homes, we see 
how considerable an army Lee commanded when Grant 
"started out gunning." 

With these brief and simple formalities, one of the 
most momentous transactions of modern times was 
concluded. The Union gunners prepared to fire a 
national salute, but Grant forbade any rejoicing over 
a fallen enemy, who, he hoped, would be an enemy 
no longer. The next day he rode to the Confederate 
lines to make a visit of farewell to General Lee. They 
parted with courteous good wishes, and Grant, with- 
out pausing to look at the city he had taken, or the 
enormous system of works which had so long held him 
at bay, hurried away to Washington, intent only upon 
putting an end to the waste and burden of war. 

A very carnival of fire and destruction had attended 
the flight of the Confederate authorities from Rich- 
mond. On Sunday night, April 2, Jefferson Davis, 
with his cabinet and their more important papers, hur- 
riedly left the doomed city on one of the crowded and 
overloaded railroad trains. The legislature of Vir- 
ginia and the governor of the State departed in a 
canal-boat toward Lynchburg; and every available 
vehicle was pressed into service by the frantic inhab- 
itants, all anxious to get away before their capital was 
desecrated by the presence of "Yankee invaders." By 
the time the military left, early next morning, a con- 
flagration was already under way. The rebel Congress 



516 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had passed a law ordering government tobacco and 
other public property to be burned. General Ewell, 
the military commander, asserts that he took the re- 
sponsibility of disobeying the law, and that they were 
not fired by his orders. However that may be, flames 
broke out in various parts of the city, while a miscel- 
laneous mob, inflamed by excitement and by the alcohol 
which had run freely in the gutters the night before, 
rushed from store to store, smashing in the doors and 
indulging all the wantonness of pillage and greed. Pub- 
lic spirit was paralyzed, and the whole fabric of society 
seemed crumbling to pieces, when the convicts from the 
penitentiary, a shouting, leaping crowd of party-colored 
demons, overcoming their guard, and drunk with lib- 
erty, appeared upon the streets, adding their final 
dramatic horror to the pandemonium. 

It is quite probable that the very magnitude and ra- 
pidity of the disaster served in a measure to mitigate 
its evil results. The burning of seven hundred build- 
ings, comprising the entire business portion of Rich- 
mond, warehouses, manufactories, mills, depots, and 
stores, all within the brief space of a day, was a visita- 
tion so sudden, so unexpected, so stupefying, as to over- 
awe and terrorize even wrong-doers, and made the 
harvest of plunder so abundant as to serve to scatter the 
mob and satisfy its rapacity to quick repletion. 

Before a new hunger could arise, assistance was at 
hand. General Weitzel, to whom the city was sur- 
rendered, taking up his headquarters in the house 
lately occupied by Jefferson Davis, promptly set about 
the work of relief; organizing efficient resistance to 
the fire, which, up to this time, seems scarcely to have 
been attempted; issuing rations to the poor, who had 
been relentlessly exposed to starvation by the action of 
the rebel Congress; and restoring order and personal 



LINCOLN IN RICHMOND 5*7 

authority. That a regiment of black soldiers assisted 
in this noble work must have seemed to the white 
inhabitants of Richmond the final drop in their cup of 
misery. 

Into the capital, thus stricken and laid waste, came 
President Lincoln on the morning of April 4. Never 
in the history of the world did the head of a mighty 
nation and the conqueror of a great rebellion enter the 
captured chief city of the insurgents in such humble- 
ness and simplicity. He had gone two weeks before 
to City Point for a visit to General Grant, and to his 
son, Captain Robert Lincoln, who was serving on 
Grant's staff. Making his home on the steamer which 
brought him, and enjoying what was probably the 
most satisfactory relaxation in which he had been able 
to indulge during his whole presidential service, he had 
visited the various camps of the great army in com- 
pany with the general, cheered everywhere by the lov- 
ing greetings of the soldiers. He had met Sherman 
when that commander hurried up fresh from his victo- 
rious march, and after Grant started on his final pur- 
suit of Lee the President still lingered ; and it was at 
City Point that he received the news of the fall of 
Richmond. 

Between the receipt of this news and the following 
forenoon, but before any information of the great fire 
had reached them, a visit was arranged for the Presi- 
dent and Rear-Admiral Porter. Ample precautions 
were taken at the start. The President went in his own 
steamer, the River Queen, with her escort, the Bat, and 
a tug used at City Point in landing from the steamer. 
Admiral Porter went in his flag-ship, the Malvern, and 
a transport carried a small cavalry escort and ambu- 
lances for the party. But the obstructions in the river 
soon made it impossible to proceed in this fashion. 



518 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

One unforeseen accident after another rendered it nec- 
essary to leave behind even the smaller boats, until 
finally the party went on in Admiral Porter's barge, 
rowed by twelve sailors, and without escort of any 
kind. In this manner the President made his advent 
into Richmond, landing near Libby Prison. As the 
party stepped ashore they found a guide among the 
contrabands who quickly crowded the streets, for the 
possible coming of the President had been circulated 
through the city. Ten of the sailors, armed with car- 
bines, were formed as a guard, six in front and four 
in rear, and between them the President, Admiral 
Porter, and the three officers who accompanied them 
walked the long distance, perhaps a mile and a half, to 
the center of the town. 

The imagination can easily fill up the picture of a 
gradually increasing crowd, principally of negroes, 
following the little group of marines and officers, with 
the tall form of the President in its center ; and, having 
learned that it was indeed Mr. Lincoln, giving ex- 
pression to joy and gratitude in the picturesque emo- 
tional ejaculations of the colored race. It is easy also 
to imagine the sharp anxiety of those who had the 
President's safety in charge during this tiresome and 
even foolhardy march through a city still in flames, 
whose white inhabitants were sullenly resentful at best, 
and whose grief and anger might at any moment culmi- 
nate against the man they looked upon as the incarna- 
tion of their misfortunes. But no accident befell him. 
Reaching General Weitzel's headquarters, Mr. Lincoln 
rested in the mansion Jefferson Davis had occupied as 
President of the Confederacy, and after a day of sight- 
seeing returned to his steamer and to Washington, to 
be stricken down by an assassin's bullet, literally "in 
the house of his friends." 



XXXVI 

Lincoln's Interviews with Campbell — Withdraws Author- 
ity for Meeting of Virginia Legislature — Conference 
of Davis and Johnston at Greensboro — Johnston Asks 
for an Armistice — Meeting of Sherman and Johnston 
— Their Agreement — Rejected at Washington — Sur- 
render of Johnston — Surrender of other Confederate 
Forces — End of the Rebel Navy — Capture of Jefferson 
Davis — Surrender of E. Kirby Smith — Number of 
Confederates Surrendered and Exchanged — Reduction 
of Federal Army to a Peace Footing — Grand Review 
of the Army 

"Y^THILE in Richmond, Mr. Lincoln had two inter- 
NY views with John A. Campbell, rebel Secretary 
of War, who had not accompanied the other fleeing offi- 
cials, preferring instead to submit to Federal authority. 
Mr. Campbell had been one of the commissioners at the 
Hampton Roads conference, and Mr. Lincoln now gave 
him a written memorandum repeating in substance the 
terms he had then offered the Confederates. On Camp- 
bell's suggestion that the Virginia legislature, if al- 
lowed to come together, would at once repeal its ordi- 
nance of secession and withdraw all Virginia troops 
from the field, he also gave permission for its members 
to assemble for that purpose. But this, being distorted 
into authority to sit in judgment on the political con- 
sequences of the war, was soon withdrawn. 

Jefferson Davis and his cabinet proceeded to Dan- 
ville, where, two days after his arrival, the rebel Presi- 
dent made still another effort to fire the Southern heart, 
5i9 



520 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

announcing, "We have now entered upon a new 
phase of the struggle. Relieved from the necessity of 
guarding particular points, our army will be free to 
move from point to point to strike the enemy in detail 
far from his base. Let us but will it and we are free" ; 
and declaring in sonorous periods his purpose never to 
abandon one foot of ground to the invader. 

The ink was hardly dry on the document when news 
came of the surrender of Lee's army, and that the 
Federal cavalry was pushing southward west of Dan- 
ville. So the Confederate government again hastily 
packed its archives and moved to Greensboro, North 
Carolina, where its headquarters were prudently kept 
on the train at the depot. Here Mr. Davis sent for 
Generals Johnston and Beauregard, and a conference 
took place between them and the members of the fleeing 
government — a conference not unmixed with em- 
barrassment, since Mr. Davis still "willed" the success 
of the Confederacy too strongly to see the true hope- 
lessness of the situation, while the generals and most 
of his cabinet were agreed that their cause was lost. 
The council of war over, General Johnston returned to 
his army to begin negotiations with Sherman; and on 
the following day, April 14, Davis and his party left 
Greensboro to continue their journey southward. 

Sherman had returned to Goldsboro from his visit 
to City Point, and set himself at once to the reorgan- 
ization of his army and the replenishment of his stores. 
He still thought there was a hard campaign with des- 
perate fighting ahead of him. Even on April 6, when 
he received news of the fall of Richmond and the 
flight of Lee and the Confederate government, he was 
unable to understand the full extent of the national 
triumph. He admired Grant so far as a man might, 
short of idolatry, yet the long habit of respect for Lee 
led him to think he would somehow get away and join 



JOHNSTON ASKS ARMISTICE 521 

Johnston in his front with at least a portion of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. He had already begun 
his march upon Johnston when he learned of Lee's sur- 
render at Appomattox. 

Definitely relieved from apprehension of a junction 
of the two Confederate armies, he now had no fear ex- 
cept of a flight and dispersal of Johnston's forces into 
guerrilla bands. If they ran away, he felt he could not 
catch them; the country was too open. They could 
scatter and meet again, and so continue a partizan 
warfare indefinitely. He could not be expected to 
know that this resolute enemy was sick to the heart of 
war, and that the desire for more fighting survived only 
in a group of fugitive politicians flying through the 
pine forests of the Carolinas from a danger which did 
not exist. 

Entering Raleigh on the morning of the thirteenth, 
he turned his heads of column southwest, hoping to 
cut off Johnston's southward march, but made no 
great haste, thinking Johnston's cavalry superior to 
his own, and desiring Sheridan to join him before he 
pushed the Confederates to extremities. While here, 
however, he received a communication from General 
Johnston, dated the thirteenth, proposing an armistice 
to enable the National and Confederate governments 
to negotiate on equal terms. It had been dictated by 
Jefferson Davis during the conference at Greensboro, 
written down by S. R. Mallory, and merely signed by 
Johnston, and was inadmissible and even offensive in 
its terms; but Sherman, anxious for peace, and him- 
self incapable of discourtesy to a brave enemy, took no 
notice of its language, and answered so cordially that 
the Confederates were probably encouraged to ask for 
better conditions of surrender than they had expected 
to receive. 

The two great antagonists met on April 17, when 



522 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Sherman offered Johnston the same terms that had been 
accorded Lee, and also communicated the news he had 
that morning received of the murder of Mr. Lincoln. 
The Confederate general expressed his unfeigned sor- 
row at this calamity, which smote the South, he said, 
as deeply as the North ; and in this mood of sympathy 
the discussion began. Johnston asserted that he would 
not be justified in such a capitulation as Sherman pro- 
posed, but suggested that together they might arrange 
the terms of a permanent peace. This idea pleased 
Sherman, to whom the prospect of ending the war with- 
out shedding another drop of blood was so tempting 
that he did not sufficiently consider the limits of his 
authority in the matter. It can be said, moreover, in 
extenuation of his course, that President Lincoln's 
despatch to Grant of March 3, which expressly for- 
bade Grant to "decide, discuss, or to confer upon any 
political question," had never been communicated to 
Sherman; while the very liberality of Grant's terms 
led him to believe that he was acting in accordance with 
the views of the administration. 

But the wisdom of Lincoln's peremptory order was 
completely vindicated. With the best intentions in the 
world, Sherman, beginning very properly by offering 
his antagonist the same terms accorded Lee, ended, 
after two days' negotiation, by making a treaty of peace 
with the Confederate States, including a preliminary 
armistice, the disbandment of the Confederate armies, 
recognition by the United States Executive of the 
several State governments, reestablishment of the Fed- 
eral courts, and a general amnesty. "Not being fully 
empowered by our respective principals to fulfil these 
terms," the agreement truthfully concluded, "we indi- 
vidually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly 
obtain the necessary authority." 



AGREEMENT REJECTED 523 

The rebel President, with unnecessary formality, re- 
quired a report from General Breckinridge, his Secre- 
tary of War, on the desirability of ratifying this most 
favorable convention. Scarcely had he given it his 
indorsement when news came that it had been disap- 
proved at Washington, and that Sherman had been 
directed to continue his military operations; and the 
peripatetic government once more took up its south- 
ward flight. 

The moment General Grant read the agreement he 
saw it was entirely inadmissible. The new President 
called his cabinet together, and Mr. Lincoln's instruc- 
tions of March 3 to Grant were repeated to Sherman — 
somewhat tardily, it must be confessed — as his rule of 
action. All this was a matter of course, and General 
Sherman could not properly, and perhaps would not, 
have objected to it. But the calm spirit of Lincoln was 
now absent from the councils of the government; and 
it was not in Andrew Johnson and Mr. Stanton to pass 
over a mistake like this, even in the case of one of the 
most illustrious captains of the age. They ordered 
Grant to proceed at once to Sherman's headquarters, 
and to direct operations against the enemy ; and, what 
was worse, Mr. Stanton printed in the newspapers the 
reasons of the government for disapproving the agree- 
ment, in terms of sharpest censure of General Sherman. 
This, when it came to his notice some weeks later, filled 
him with hot indignation, and, coupled with some or- 
ders Halleck, who had been made commander of the 
armies of the Potomac and the James, issued to Meade, 
to disregard Sherman's truce and push forward against 
Johnston, roused him to open defiance of the authorities 
he thought were persecuting him, and made him de- 
clare, in a report to Grant, that he would have main- 
tained his truce at any cost of life. Halleck's order, 



524 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

however, had been nullified by Johnston's surrender, 
and Grant, suggesting that this outburst was uncalled 
for, offered Sherman the opportunity to correct the 
statement. This he refused, insisting that his record 
stand as written, although avowing his readiness to 
obey all future orders of Grant and the President. 

So far as Johnston was concerned, the war was in- 
deed over. He was unable longer to hold his men 
together. Eight thousand of them left their camps and 
went home in the week of the truce, many riding away 
on the artillery horses and train mules. On notice of 
Federal disapproval of his negotiations with Sherman, 
he disregarded Jefferson Davis's instructions to dis- 
band the infantry and try to escape with the cavalry 
and light guns, and answered Sherman's summons by 
inviting another conference, at which, on April 26, he 
surrendered all the forces in his command on the same 
terms granted Lee at Appomattox ; Sherman supplying, 
as did Grant, rations for the beaten army. Thirty- 
seven thousand men and officers were paroled in North 
Carolina — exclusive, of course, of the thousands who 
had slipped away to their homes during the suspension 
of hostilities. 

After Appomattox the rebellion fell to pieces all at 
once. Lee surrendered less than one sixth of the Con- 
federates in arms on April 9. The armies that still 
remained, though inconsiderable when compared with 
the mighty host under the national colors, were yet infi- 
nitely larger than any Washington ever commanded, 
and capable of strenuous resistance and of incalculable 
mischief. But the march of Sherman from Atlanta to 
the sea, and his northward progress through the Caro- 
linas, had predisposed the great interior region to make 
an end of strife: a tendency which was greatly pro- 
moted by the masterly raid of General J. H. Wilson's 



END OF THE REBEL NAVY 525 

cavalry through Alabama, and his defeat of Forrest at 
Selma. An officer of Taylor's staff came to Canby's 
headquarters on April 19 to make arrangements for 
the surrender of all the Confederate forces east of the 
Mississippi not already paroled by Sherman and Wil- 
son, embracing some forty-two thousand men. The 
terms were agreed upon and signed on May 4, at the 
village of Citronelle in Alabama. At the same time 
and place the Confederate Commodore Farrand sur- 
rendered to Rear-Admiral Thatcher all the naval forces 
of the Confederacy in the neighborhood of Mobile — a 
dozen vessels and some hundreds of officers. 

The rebel navy had practically ceased to exist some 
months before. The splendid fight in Mobile Bay on 
August 5, 1864, between Farragut's fleet and the rebel 
ram Tennessee, with her three attendant gunboats, and 
Cushing's daring destruction of the powerful Albe- 
marle in Albemarle Sound on October 2J, marked its 
end in Confederate waters. The duel between the 
Kearsarge and the Alabama off Cherbourg had already 
taken place ; a few more encounters, at or near foreign 
ports, furnished occasion for personal bravery and sub- 
sequent lively diplomatic correspondence; and rebel 
vessels, fitted out under the unduly lenient "neutrality" 
of France and England, continued for a time to work 
havoc with American shipping in various parts of the 
world. But these two Union successes, and the final 
capture of Fort Fisher and of Wilmington early in 
1865, which closed the last haven for daring blockade- 
runners, practically silenced the Confederate navy. 

General E. Kirby Smith commanded all the insur- 
gent forces west of the Mississippi. On him the des- 
perate hopes of Mr. Davis and his flying cabinet were 
fixed, after the successive surrenders of Lee and John- 
ston had left them no prospect in the east. They im- 



526 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

agined they could move westward, gathering up strag- 
glers as they fled, and, crossing the river, join Smith's 
forces, and there continue the war. But after a time 
even this hope failed them. Their escort melted away ; 
members of the cabinet dropped off on various pretexts, 
and Mr. Davis, abandoning the attempt to reach the 
Mississippi River, turned again toward the east in an 
effort to gain the Florida coast and escape by means 
of a sailing vessel to Texas. 

The two expeditions sent in pursuit of him by Gen- 
eral Wilson did not allow this consummation, which 
the government at Washington might possibly have 
viewed with equanimity. His camp near Irwinville, 
Georgia, was surrounded by Lieutenant-Colonel Prit- 
chard's command at dawn on May 10, and he was 
captured as he was about to mount horse with a few 
companions and ride for the coast, leaving his fam- 
ily to follow more slowly. The tradition that he was 
captured in disguise, having donned female dress in 
a last desperate attempt to escape, has only this foun- 
dation, that Mrs. Davis threw a cloak over her hus- 
band's shoulders, and a shawl over his head, on the 
approach of the Federal soldiers. He was taken to 
Fortress Monroe, and there kept in confinement for 
about two years; was arraigned before the United 
States Circuit Court for the District of Virginia for the 
crime of treason, and released on bail ; and was finally 
restored to all the duties and privileges of citizen- 
ship, except the right to hold office, by President John- 
son's proclamation of amnesty of December 25, 1868. 

General E. Kirby Smith, on whom Davis's last hopes 
of success had centered, kept up so threatening an at- 
titude that Sherman was sent from Washington to 
bring him to reason. But he did not long hold his 
position of solitary defiance. One more needless 



GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMY 527 

skirmish took place near Brazos, Texas, and then 
Smith followed the example of Taylor and surrendered 
his entire force, some eighteen thousand, to General 
Canby, on May 26. One hundred and seventy-five 
thousand men in all were surrendered by the different 
Confederate commanders, and there were, in addition 
to these, about ninety-nine thousand prisoners in na- 
tional custody during the year. One third of these 
were exchanged, and two thirds released. This was 
done as rapidly as possible by successive orders of the 
War Department, beginning on May 9 and continu- 
ing through the summer. 

The first object of the government was to stop the 
waste of war. Recruiting ceased immediately after 
Lee's surrender, and measures were taken to reduce 
as promptly as possible the vast military establishment. 
Every chief of bureau was ordered, on April 28, to 
proceed at once to the reduction of expenses in his 
department to a peace footing; and this before Taylor 
or Smith had surrendered, and while Jefferson Davis 
was still at large. The army of a million men was 
brought down, with incredible ease and celerity, to one 
of twenty-five thousand. 

Before the great army melted away into the greater 
body of citizens, the soldiers enjoyed one final triumph, 
a march through the capital, undisturbed by death or 
danger, under the eyes of their highest commanders, 
military and civilian, and the representatives of the 
people whose nationality they had saved. Those who 
witnessed this solemn yet joyous pageant will never for- 
get it, and will pray that their children may never wit- 
ness anything like it. For two days this formidable 
host marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, 
starting from the shadow of the dome of the Capitol, 
and filling that wide thoroughfare to Georgetown with 



528 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a serried mass, moving with the easy yet rapid pace 
of veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this 
march of the mightiest host the continent has ever seen 
gathered together was grand and imposing; but it was 
not as a spectacle alone that it affected the beholder 
most deeply. It was not a mere holiday parade ; it was 
an army of citizens on their way home after a long and 
terrible war. Their clothes were worn and pierced with 
bullets ; their banners had been torn with shot and shell, 
and lashed in the winds of a thousand battles ; the very 
drums and fifes had called out the troops to number- 
less night alarms, and sounded the onset on historic 
fields. The whole country claimed these heroes as a 
part of themselves. And now, done with fighting, 
they were going joyously and peaceably to their homes, 
to take up again the tasks they had willingly laid down 
in the hour of their country's peril. 

The world had many lessons to learn from this great 
conflict, which liberated a subject people and changed 
the tactics of modern warfare; but the greatest lesson 
it taught the nations of waiting Europe was the con- 
servative power of democracy — that a million men, 
flushed with victory, and with arms in their hands, 
could be trusted to disband the moment the need for 
their services was over, and take up again the soberer 
labors of peace. 

Friends loaded these veterans with flowers as they 
swung down the Avenue, both men and officers, until 
some were fairly hidden under their fragrant burden. 
There was laughter and applause; grotesque figures 
were not absent as Sherman's legions passed, with their 
"bummers" and their regimental pets ; but with all the 
shouting and the laughter and the joy of this unprece- 
dented ceremony, there was one sad and dominant 
thought which could not be driven from the minds of 



GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMY 529 

those who saw it — that of the men who were absent, 
and who had, nevertheless, richly earned the right to 
be there. The soldiers in their shrunken companies 
were conscious of the ever-present memories of the 
brave comrades who had fallen by the way ; and in the 
whole army there was the passionate and unavailing 
regret for their wise, gentle, and powerful friend, 
Abraham Lincoln, gone forever from the house by the 
Avenue, who had called the great host into being, 
directed the course of the nation during the four years 
they had been fighting for its preservation, and for 
whom, more than for any other, this crowning peaceful 
pageant would have been fraught with deep and happy 
meaning. 



XXXVII 

The 14th of April — Celebration at Fort Sumter — Last 
Cabinet Meeting — Lincoln's Attitude toward Threats 
of Assassination — Booth's Plot — Ford's Theater — Fate 
of the Assassins — The Mourning Pageant 

MR. LINCOLN had returned to Washington, re- 
freshed by his visit to City Point, and cheered by 
the unmistakable signs that the war was almost over. 
With that ever-present sense of responsibility which 
distinguished him, he gave his thoughts to the momen- 
tous question of the restoration of the Union and of 
harmony between the lately warring sections. His 
whole heart was now enlisted in the work of "binding 
up the nation's wounds," and of doing all which might 
"achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace." 

April 14 was a day of deep and tranquil happiness 
throughout the United States. It was Good Friday, ob- 
served by a portion of the people as an occasion of 
fasting and religious meditation ; though even among 
the most devout the great tidings of the preceding week 
exerted their joyous influence, and changed this period 
of traditional mourning into an occasion of general 
thanksgiving. But though the Misereres turned of 
themselves to Te Deums, the date was not to lose its 
awful significance in the calendar: at night it was 
claimed once more by a world-wide sorrow. 

The thanksgiving of the nation found its principal 
expression at Charleston Harbor, where the flag of the 
Union received that day a conspicuous reparation on 
530 



LAST CABINET MEETING 53i 

the spot where it had first been outraged. At noon 
General Robert Anderson raised over Fort Sumter the 
indentical flag lowered and saluted by him four years 
before; the surrender of Lee giving a more tran- 
scendent importance to this ceremony, made stately 
with orations, music, and military display. 

In Washington it was a day of deep peace and 
thankfulness. Grant had arrived that morning, and, 
going to the Executive Mansion, had met the cabinet, 
Friday being their regular day for assembling. He ex- 
pressed some anxiety as to the news from Sherman 
which he was expecting hourly. The President an- 
swered him in that singular vein of poetic mysticism 
which, though constantly held in check by his strong 
common sense, formed such a remarkable element in 
his character. He assured Grant that the news would 
come soon and come favorably, for he had last night 
had his usual dream which preceded great events. He 
seemed to be, he said, in a singular and indescribable 
vessel, but always the same, moving with great rapidity 
toward a dark and indefinite shore; he had had this 
dream before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and 
Vicksburg. The cabinet were greatly impressed by this 
story ; but Grant, most matter-of-fact of created beings, 
made the characteristic response that "Murfreesboro 
was no victory, and had no important results." The 
President did not argue this point with him, but re- 
peated that Sherman would beat or had beaten John- 
ston ; that his dream must relate to that, since he knew 
of no other important event likely at present to occur. 

Questions of trade between the States, and of vari- 
ous phases of reconstruction, occupied the cabinet 
on this last day of Lincoln's firm and tolerant rule. 
The President spoke at some length, disclosing his 
hope that much could be done to reanimate the States 



532 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and get their governments in successful operation be- 
fore Congress came together. He was anxious to close 
the period of strife without over-much discussion. 
Particularly did he desire to avoid the shedding of 
blood, or any vindictiveness of punishment. "No one 
need expect that he would take any part in hanging 
or killing these men, even the worst of them." 
"Enough lives have been sacrificed," he exclaimed; 
"we must extinguish our resentments if we expect har- 
mony and union." He did not wish the autonomy nor 
the individuality of the States disturbed; and he 
closed the session by commending the whole subject 
to the most careful consideration of his advisers. It 
was, he said, the great question pending — they must 
now begin to act in the interest of peace. Such were 
the last words that Lincoln spoke to his cabinet. They 
dispersed with these sentences of clemency and good 
will in their ears, never again to meet under his wise 
and benignant chairmanship. He had told them that 
morning a strange story, which made some demand 
upon their faith, but the circumstances under which 
they were next to come together were beyond the scope 
of the wildest fancy. 

The day was one of unusual enjoyment to Mr. Lin- 
coln. His son Robert had returned from the field with 
General Grant, and the President spent an hour with 
the young captain in delighted conversation over the 
campaign. He denied himself generally to the throng 
of visitors, admitting only a few friends. In the 
afternoon he went for a long drive with Mrs. Lincoln. 
His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy 
and tender. He talked much of the past and future; 
after four years of trouble and tumult he looked for- 
ward to four years of comparative quiet and normal 
work ; after that he expected to go back to Illinois and 



THREATS OF ASSASSINATION 533 

practise law again. He was never simpler or gentler 
than on this day of unprecedented triumph; his heart 
overflowed with sentiments of gratitude to Heaven, 
which took the shape, usual to generous natures, of love 
and kindness to all men. 

From the very beginning of his presidency, Mr. Lin- 
coln had been constantly subject to the threats of his 
enemies. His mail was infested with brutal and vulgar 
menace, and warnings of all sorts came to him from 
zealous or nervous friends. Most of these communica- 
tions received no notice. In cases where there seemed 
a ground for inquiry, it was made, as carefully as pos- 
sible, by the President's private secretary, or by the 
War Department; but always without substantial re- 
sult. Warnings that appeared most definite, when ex- 
amined, proved too vague and confused for further 
attention. The President was too intelligent not to 
know that he was in some danger. Madmen frequently 
made their way to the very door of the executive office, 
and sometimes into Mr. Lincoln's presence. But he 
had himself so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly, 
even to his enemies, that it was hard for him to be- 
lieve in political hatred so deadly as to lead to murder. 

lie knew, indeed, that incitements to murder him 
were not uncommon in the South, but as is the habit 
of men constitutionally brave, he considered the pos- 
sibilities of danger remote, and positively refused to 
torment himself with precautions for his own safety; 
summing the matter up by saying that both friends and 
strangers must have daily access to him; that his life 
was therefore in reach of any one, sane or mad, who 
was ready to murder and be hanged for it ; and that he 
could not possibly guard against all danger unless he 
shut himself up in an iron box, in which condition he 
could scarcely perform the duties of a President. He 



534 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

therefore went in and out before the people, always 
unarmed, generally unattended. He received hun- 
dreds of visitors in a day, his breast bare to pistol or 
knife. He walked at midnight, with a single secretary, 
or alone, from the Executive Mansion to the War De- 
partment and back. He rode through the lonely roads 
of an uninhabited suburb from the White House to the 
Soldiers' Home in the dusk of the evening, and re- 
turned to his work in the morning before the town was 
astir. He was greatly annoyed when it was decided 
that there must be a guard at the Executive Mansion, 
and that a squad of cavalry must accompany him on his 
daily drive ; but he was always reasonable, and yielded 
to the best judgment of others. 

Four years of threats and boastings that were un- 
founded, and of plots that came to nothing, thus passed 
away; but precisely at the time when the triumph of 
the nation seemed assured, and a feeling of peace and 
security was diffused over the country, one of the 
conspiracies, apparently no more important than the 
others, ripened in the sudden heat of hatred and despair. 
A little band of malignant secessionists, consisting of 
John Wilkes Booth, an actor of a family of famous 
players; Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a disbanded rebel 
soldier from Florida; George Atzerodt, formerly a 
coachmaker, but more recently a spy and blockade- 
runner of the Potomac; David E. Herold, a young 
druggist's clerk; Samuel Arnold and Michael 
O'Laughlin, Maryland secessionists and Confederate 
soldiers ; and John H. Surratt, had their ordinary ren- 
dezvous at the house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, the 
widowed mother of the last named, formerly a woman 
of some property in Maryland, but reduced by reverses 
to keeping a small boarding-house in Washington. 

Booth was the leader of the little coterie. He was a 



JOHN WILKES BOOTH 535 

young man of twenty-six, strikingly handsome, with 
that ease and grace of manner which came to him of 
right from his theatrical ancestors. He had played 
for several seasons with only indifferent success, his 
value as an actor lying rather in his romantic beauty 
of person than in any talent or industry he possessed. 
He was a fanatical secessionist, and had imbibed at 
Richmond and other Southern cities where he played 
a furious spirit of partizanship against Lincoln and 
the Union party. After the reelection of Mr. Lincoln, 
he visited Canada, consorted with the rebel emissaries 
there, and — whether or not at their instigation cannot 
certainly be said — conceived a scheme to capture the 
President and take him to Richmond. He passed a 
great part of the autumn and winter pursuing this fan- 
tastic enterprise, seeming to be always well supplied 
with money; but the winter wore away, and nothing 
was accomplished. On March 4 he was at the Capitol, 
and created a disturbance by trying to force his way 
through the line of policemen who guarded the pas- 
sage through which the President walked to the east 
front of the building. His intentions at this time are 
not known; he afterward said he lost an excellent 
chance of killing the President that day. 

His ascendancy over his fellow-conspirators seems 
to have been complete. After the surrender of Lee, in 
an access of malice and rage akin to madness he called 
them together and assigned each his part in the new 
crime which had risen in his mind out of the abandoned 
abduction scheme. This plan was as brief and simple 
as it was horrible. Powell, alias Payne, the stalwart, 
brutal, simple-minded boy from Florida, was to murder 
Seward ; Atzerodt, the comic villain of the drama, was 
assigned to remove Andrew Johnson; Booth reserved 
for himself the most conspicuous role of the tragedy. 



536 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It was Herold's duty to attend him as page and aid him 
in his escape. Minor parts were given to stage-car- 
penters and other hangers-on, who probably did not 
understand what it all meant. Herold, Atzerodt, and 
Surratt had previously deposited at a tavern at Sur- 
rattsville, Maryland, owned by Mrs. Surratt, but kept 
by a man named Lloyd, a quantity of arms and materi- 
als to be used in the abduction scheme. Mrs. Surratt, 
being at the tavern on the eleventh, warned Lloyd to 
have the "shooting-irons" in readiness, and, visiting 
the place again on the fourteenth, told him they would 
probably be called for that night. 

The preparations for the final blow were made with 
feverish haste. It was only about noon of the four- 
teenth that Booth learned that the President was to go 
to Ford's Theater that night to see the play "Our 
American Cousin." It has always been a matter of 
surprise in Europe that he should have been at a place 
of amusement on Good Friday; but the day was not 
kept sacred in America, except by the members of cer- 
tain churches. The President was fond of the theater. 
It was one of his few means of recreation. Besides, the 
town was thronged with soldiers and officers, all eager 
to see him; by appearing in public he would gratify 
many people whom he could not otherwise meet. Mrs. 
Lincoln had asked General and Mrs. Grant to accom- 
pany her; they had accepted, and the announcement 
that they would be present had been made in the even- 
ing papers; but they changed their plans, and went 
north by an afternoon train. Mrs. Lincoln then in- 
vited in their stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, 
the daughter and the stepson of Senator Ira Harris. 
Being detained by visitors, the play had made some 
progress when the President appeared. The band 
struck up "Hail to the Chief," the actors ceased play- 



FORD'S THEATER 537 

ing, the audience rose, cheering tumultuously, the 
President bowed in acknowledgment, and the play 
went on. 

From the moment he learned of the President's in- 
tention, Booth's every action was alert and energetic. 
He and his confederates were seen on horseback in 
every part of the city. He had a hurried conference 
with Mrs. Surratt before she started for Lloyd's tavern. 
He intrusted to an actor named Matthews a carefully 
prepared statement of his reasons for committing the 
murder, which he charged him to give to the publisher 
of the "National Intelligencer," but which Matthews, 
in the terror and dismay of the night, burned without 
showing to any one. Booth was perfectly at home in 
Ford's Theater. Either by himself, or with the aid of 
friends, he arranged his whole plan of attack and 
escape during the afternoon. He counted upon address 
and audacity to gain access to the small passage behind 
the President's box. Once there, he guarded against 
interference by an arrangement of a wooden bar to be 
fastened by a simple mortise in the angle of the wall 
and the door by which he had entered, so that the door 
could not be opened from without. He even provided 
for the contingency of not gaining entrance to the box 
by boring a hole in its door, through which he might 
either observe the occupants, or take aim and shoot. 
He hired at a livery-stable a small, fleet horse. 

A few minutes before ten o'clock, leaving his horse 
at the rear of the theater in charge of a call-boy, he 
went into a neighboring saloon, took a drink of brandy, 
and. entering the theater, passed rapidly to the little 
hallway leading to the President's box. Showing a 
card to the servant in attendance, he was allowed to 
enter, closed the door noiselessly, and secured it with 
the wooden bar he had previously made ready, without 



538 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

disturbing any of the occupants of the box, between 
whom and himself yet remained the partition and the 
door through which he had made the hole. 

No one, not even the comedian who uttered them, 
could ever remember the last words of the piece that 
were spoken that night — the last Abraham Lincoln 
heard upon earth. The tragedy in the box turned 
play and players to the most unsubstantial of phan- 
toms. Here were five human beings in a narrow space 
— the greatest man of his time, in the glory of the most 
stupendous success of our history ; his wife, proud and 
happy; a pair of betrothed lovers, with all the prom- 
ise of felicity that youth, social position, and wealth 
could give them; and this handsome young actor, the 
pet of his little world. The glitter of fame, happiness, 
and ease was upon the entire group; yet in an instant 
everything was to be changed. Quick death was to 
come to the central figure — the central figure of the 
century's great and famous men. Over the rest hov- 
ered fates from which a mother might pray kindly 
death to save her children in their infancy. One was 
to wander with the stain of murder upon his soul, 
in frightful physical pain, with a price upon his head 
and the curse of a world upon his name, until he died 
a dog's death in a burning barn ; the wife was to pass 
the rest of her days in melancholy and madness; and 
one of the lovers was to slay the other, and end his life 
a raving maniac. 

The murderer seemed to himself to be taking part 
in a play. Hate and brandy had for weeks kept his 
brain in a morbid state. Holding a pistol in one hand 
and a knife in the other, he opened the box door, put the 
pistol to the President's head, and fired. Major Rath- 
bone sprang to grapple with him, and received a savage 
knife wound in the arm. Then, rushing forward, 



THE PRESIDENT'S DEATH 539 

Booth placed his hand on the railing of the box and 
vaulted to the stage. It was a high leap, but nothing 
to such an athlete. He would have got safely away but 
for his spur catching in the flag that draped the front 
of the box. He fell, the torn flag trailing on his spur ; 
but, though the fall had broken his leg, he rose in- 
stantly, and brandishing his knife and shouting, "Sic 
Semper Tyrannis !" fled rapidly across the stage and 
out of sight. Major Rathbone called, "Stop him!" 
The cry rang out, "He has shot the President!" and 
from the audience, stupid at first with surprise, and 
wild afterward with excitement and horror, two or 
three men jumped upon the stage in pursuit of the 
assassin. But he ran through the familiar passages, 
leaped upon his horse, rewarding with a kick and a 
curse the boy who held him, and escaped into the night. 
The President scarcely moved; his head drooped 
forward slightly, his eyes closed. Major Rathbone, 
not regarding his own grievous hurt, rushed to the door 
of the box to summon aid. He found it barred, and 
some one on the outside beating and clamoring for ad- 
mittance. It was at once seen that the President's 
wound was mortal. A large derringer bullet had en- 
tered the back of the head, on the left side, and, passing 
through the brain, lodged just behind the left eye. He 
was carried to a house across the street, and laid upon 
a bed in a small room at the rear of the hall on the 
ground floor. Mrs. Lincoln followed, tenderly cared 
for by Miss Harris. Rathbone, exhausted by loss of 
blood, fainted, and was taken home. Messengers were 
sent for the cabinet, for the surgeon-general, for Dr. 
Stone, Mr. Lincoln's family physician, and for others 
whose official or private relations to the President 
gave them the right to be there. A crowd of people 
rushed instinctively to the White House, and, burst- 



54Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing through the doors, shouted the dreadful news 
to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay, who sat together 
in an upper room. They ran down-stairs, and as they 
were entering a carriage to drive to Tenth Street, a 
friend came up and told them that Mr. Seward and 
most of the cabinet had been murdered. The news 
seemed so improbable that they hoped it was all un- 
true; but, on reaching Tenth Street, the excitement 
and the gathering crowds prepared them for the worst. 
In a few moments those who had been sent for and 
many others were assembled in the little chamber where 
the chief of the state lay in his agony. His son was 
met at the door by Dr. Stone, who with grave tender- 
ness informed him that there was no hope. 

The President had been shot a few minutes after ten. 
The wound would have brought instant death to most 
men, but his vital tenacity was remarkable. He was, 
of course, unconscious from the first moment; but he 
breathed with slow and regular respiration throughout 
the night. As the dawn came and the lamplight grew 
pale, his pulse began to fail ; but his face, even then, was 
scarcely more haggard than those of the sorrowing 
men around him. His automatic moaning ceased, a 
look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features, 
and at twenty-two minutes after seven he died. Stan- 
ton broke the silence by saying : 

"Now he belongs to the ages." 

Booth had done his work efficiently. His principal 
subordinate, Payne, had acted with equal audacity and 
cruelty, but not with equally fatal result. Going to the 
home of the Secretary of State, who lay ill in bed, he 
had forced his way to Mr. Seward's room, on the pre- 
text of being a messenger from the physician with a 
packet of medicine to deliver. The servant at the 
door tried to prevent him from going up-stairs; the 



ATTACK ON SEWARD 541 

Secretary's son, Frederick W. Seward, hearing the 
noise, stepped out into the hall to check the intruders. 
Payne rushed upon him with a pistol which missed fire, 
then rained blows with it upon his head, and, grappling 
and struggling, the two came to the Secretary's room 
and fell together through the door. Frederick Seward 
soon became unconscious, and remained so for several 
weeks, being, perhaps, the last man in the civilized 
world to learn the strange story of the night. The 
Secretary's daughter and a soldier nurse were in the 
room. Payne struck them right and left, wounding 
the nurse with his knife, and then, rushing to the bed, 
began striking at the throat of the crippled statesman, 
inflicting three terrible wounds on his neck and cheek. 
The nurse recovered himself and seized the assassin 
from behind, while another son, roused by his sister's 
screams, came into the room and managed at last to 
force him outside the door — not, however, until he and 
the nurse had been stabbed repeatedly. Payne broke 
away at last, and ran down-stairs, seriously wounding 
an attendant on the way, reached the door unhurt, 
sprang upon his horse, and rode leisurely away. When 
surgical aid arrived, the Secretary's house looked like 
a field hospital. Five of its inmates were bleeding from 
ghastly wounds, and two of them, among the highest 
officials of the nation, it was thought might never see 
the light of another day; though all providentially 
recovered. 

The assassin left behind him his hat, which appar- 
ently trivial loss cost him and one of his fellow con- 
spirators their lives. Fearing that the lack of it would 
arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of 
making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods 
east of Washington for two days. Driven at last by 
hunger, he returned to the city and presented himself at 



542 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mrs. Surratt's house at the very moment when all its 
inmates had been arrested and were about to be taken 
to the office of the provost-marshal. Payne thus fell 
into the hands of justice, and the utterance of half a 
dozen words by him and the unhappy woman whose 
shelter he sought proved the death-warrant of them 
both. 

Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as 
he stood before the footlights and brandished his dag- 
ger; but his swift horse quickly carried him beyond any 
haphazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy-Yard bridge 
and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by 
Herold. The assassin and his wretched acolyte came 
at midnight to Mrs. Surratt's tavern, and afterward 
pushed on through the moonlight to the house of an 
acquaintance of Booth, a surgeon named Mudd, who 
set Booth's leg and gave him a room, where he rested 
until evening, when Mudd sent them on their desolate 
way south. After parting with him they went to the 
residence of Samuel Cox near Port Tobacco, and were 
by him given into the charge of Thomas Jones, a con- 
traband trader between Maryland and Richmond, a 
man so devoted to the interests of the Confederacy 
that treason and murder seemed every-day incidents 
to be accepted as natural and necessary. He kept 
Booth and Herold in hiding at the peril of his life for 
a week, feeding and caring for them in the woods near 
his house, watching for an opportunity to ferry them 
across the Potomac ; doing this while every wood-path 
was haunted by government detectives, well knowing 
that death would promptly follow his detection, and 
that a reward was offered for the capture of his help- 
less charge that would make a rich man of any one who 
gave him up. 

With such devoted aid Booth might have wandered 



FATE OF THE ASSASSINS 543 

a long way ; but there is no final escape but suicide for 
an assassin with a broken leg. At each painful move 
the chances of discovery increased. Jones was able, 
after repeated failures, to row his fated guests across 
the Potomac. Arriving on the Virginia side, they 
lived the lives of hunted animals for two or three days 
longer, finding to their horror that they were received 
by the strongest Confederates with more of annoyance 
than enthusiasm, though none, indeed, offered to be- 
tray them. Booth had by this time seen the comments 
of the newspapers on his work, and bitterer than death 
or bodily suffering was the blow to his vanity. He con- 
fided his feelings of wrong to his diary, comparing 
himself favorably with Brutus and Tell, and complain- 
ing: "I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon 
me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow 
would have made me great." 

On the night of April 25, he and Herold were sur- 
rounded by a party under Lieutenant E. P. Doherty, 
as they lay sleeping in a barn belonging to one Garrett, 
in Caroline County, Virginia, on the road to Bowling 
Green. When called upon to surrender, Booth re- 
fused. A parley took place, after which Doherty told 
him he would fire the barn. At this Herold came out 
and surrendered. The barn was fired, and while it was 
burning, Booth, clearly visible through the cracks in 
the building, was shot by Boston Corbett, a sergeant 
of cavalry. He was hit in the back of the neck, not 
far from the place where he had shot the President, 
lingered about three hours in great pain, and died at 
seven in the morning. 

The surviving conspirators, with the exception of 
John H. Surratt, were tried by military commission 
sitting in Washington in the months of May and June. 
The charges against them specified that they were 



544 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"incited and encouraged" to treason and murder by 
Jefferson Davis and the Confederate emissaries in 
Canada. This was not proved on the trial ; though the 
evidence bearing on the case showed frequent commu- 
nications between Canada and Richmond and the 
Booth coterie in Washington, and some transactions 
in drafts at the Montreal Bank, where Jacob Thomp- 
son and Booth both kept accounts. Mrs. Surratt, 
Payne, Herold, and Atzerodt were hanged on July 7; 
Mudd, Arnold, and O'Laughlin were imprisoned for 
life at the Tortugas, the term being afterward short- 
ened; and Spangler, the scene-shifter at the theater, was 
sentenced to six years in jail. John H. Surratt escaped 
to Canada, and from there to England. He wandered 
over Europe, and finally was detected in Egypt and 
brought back to Washington in 1867, where his trial 
lasted two months, and ended in a disagreement of 
the jury. 

Upon the hearts of a people glowing with the joy 
of victory, the news of the President's assassination 
fell as a great shock. It was the first time the tele- 
graph had been called upon to spread over the world 
tidings of such deep and mournful significance. In the 
stunning effect of the unspeakable calamity the coun- 
try lost sight of the national success of the past week, 
and it thus came to pass that there was never any or- 
ganized expression of the general exultation or rejoic- 
ing in the North over the downfall of the rebellion. It 
was unquestionably best that it should be so ; and Lin- 
coln himself would not have had it otherwise. He 
hated the arrogance of triumph ; and even in his cruel 
death he would have been glad to know that his passage 
to eternity would prevent too loud an exultation over 
the vanquished. As it was, the South could take no 
umbrage at a grief so genuine and so legitimate; the 



PUBLIC GRIEF 545 

people of that section even shared, to a certain degree, 
in the lamentations over the bier of one whom in their 
inmost hearts they knew to have wished them well. 

There was one exception to the general grief too 
remarkable to be passed over in silence. Among the 
extreme radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln's determined 
clemency and liberality toward the Southern people 
had made an impression so unfavorable that, though 
they were naturally shocked at his murder, they did 
not, among themselves, conceal their gratification that 
he was no longer in the way. In a political caucus, held 
a few hours after the President's death, "the feeling 
was nearly universal," to quote the language of one 
of their most prominent representatives, "that the ac- 
cession of Johnson to the presidency would prove a 
godsend to the country." 

In Washington, with this singular exception, the 
manifestation of public grief was immediate and de- 
monstrative. Within an hour after the body was taken 
to the White House, the town was shrouded in black. 
Not only the public buildings, the shops, and the better 
residences were draped in funeral decorations, but still 
more touching proof of affection was seen in the poor- 
est class of houses, where laboring men of both colors 
found means in their penury to afford some scanty 
show of mourning. The interest and veneration of 
the people still centered in the White House, where, 
under a tall catafalque in the East Room, the late chief 
lay in the majesty of death, and not at the modest 
tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the new Presi- 
dent had his lodging, and where Chief-Justice Chase 
administered the oath of office to him at eleven o'clock 
on the morning of April 15. 

It was determined that the funeral ceremonies in 
Washington should be celebrated on Wednesday, April 



546 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

19, and all the churches throughout the country were 
invited to join at the same time in appropriate obser- 
vances. The ceremonies in the East Room were brief 
and simple — the burial service, a prayer, and a short 
address; while all the pomp and circumstance which 
the government could command was employed to give 
a fitting escort from the White House to the Capitol, 
where the body of the President was to lie in state. 
The vast procession moved amid the booming of min- 
ute-guns, and the tolling of all the bells in Washing- 
ton, Georgetown, and Alexandria ; and to associate the 
pomp of the day with the greatest work of Lincoln's 
life, a detachment of colored troops marched at the 
head of the line. 

As soon as it was announced that Mr. Lincoln was to 
be buried at Springfield, Illinois, every town and city 
on the route begged that the train might halt within 
its limits and give its people the opportunity of testify- 
ing their grief and reverence. It was finally arranged 
that the funeral cortege should follow substantially 
the same route over which he had come in 1861 to take 
possession of the office to which he had given a new 
dignity and value for all time. On April 21, accom- 
panied by a guard of honor, and in a train decked with 
somber trappings, the journey was begun. At Balti- 
more, through which, four years before, it was a 
question whether the President-elect could pass with 
safety to his life, the coffin was taken with reverent 
care to the great dome of the Exchange, where, sur- 
rounded with evergreens and lilies, it lay for several 
hours, the people passing by in mournful throngs. 
The same demonstration was repeated, gaining con- 
tinually in intensity of feeling and solemn splendor of 
display, in every city through which the procession 
passed. The reception in New York was worthy alike 



THE MOURNING PAGEANT 547 

of the great city and of the memory of the man they 
honored. The body lay in state in the City Hall, and 
a half-million people passed in deep silence before it. 
Here General Scott came, pale and feeble, but resolute, 
to pay his tribute of respect to his departed friend and 
commander. 

The train went up the Hudson River by night, and at 
every town and village on the way vast waiting crowds 
were revealed by the fitful glare of torches, and dirges 
and hymns were sung. As the train passed into Ohio, 
the crowds increased in density, and the public grief 
seemed intensified at every step westward. The people 
of the great central basin were claiming their own. 
The day spent at Cleveland was unexampled in the 
depth of emotion it brought to life. Some of the guard 
of honor have said that it was at this point they began 
to appreciate the place which Lincoln was to hold in 
history. 

The last stage of this extraordinary progress was 
completed, and Springfield reached at nine o'clock on 
the morning of May 3. Nothing had been done or 
thought of for two weeks in Springfield but the prep- 
arations for this day, and they had been made with a 
thoroughness which surprised the visitors from the 
East. The body lay in state in the Capitol, which was 
richly draped from roof to basement in black velvet 
and silver fringe. Within it was a bower of bloom and 
fragrance. For twenty-four hours an unbroken stream 
of people passed through, bidding their friend and 
neighbor welcome home and farewell ; and at ten 
o'clock on May 4, the coffin lid was closed, and a vast 
procession moved out to Oak Ridge, where the town 
had set apart a lovely spot for his grave, and where 
the dead President was committed to the soil of the 
State which had so loved and honored him. The cere- 



548 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

monies at the grave were simple and touching. Bishop 
Simpson delivered a pathetic oration; prayers were 
offered and hymns were sung; but the weightiest and 
most eloquent words uttered anywhere that day were 
those of the second inaugural, which the committee 
had wisely ordained to be read over his grave, as the 
friends of Raphael chose the incomparable canvas of 
the Transfiguration to be the chief ornament of his 
funeral. 



XXXVIII 

Lincoln's Early Environment — Its Effect on his Charac- 
ter — His Attitude toward Slavery and the Slaveholder 
— His Schooling in Disappointment — His Seeming 
Failures — His Real Successes — The Final Trial — His 
Achievements — His Place in History 

A CHILD born to an inheritance of want; a boy- 
growing into a narrow world of ignorance; a 
youth taking up the burden of coarse manual labor; 
a man entering on the doubtful struggle of a local 
backwoods career — these were the beginnings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, if we analyze them under the hard prac- 
tical cynical philosophy which takes for its motto that 
"nothing succeeds but success." If, however, we adopt 
a broader philosophy, and apply the more generous 
and more universal principle that "everything succeeds 
which attacks favorable opportunity with fitting endea- 
vor," then we see that it was the strong vitality, the 
active intelligence, and the indefinable psychological 
law of moral growth that assimilates the good and re- 
jects the bad, which Nature gave this obscure child, 
that carried him to the service of mankind and to 
the admiration of the centuries with the same certainty 
with which the acorn grows to be the oak. 

We see how even the limitations of his environment 
helped the end. Self-reliance, that most vital charac- 
teristic of the pioneer, was his by blood and birth and 
training; and developed through the privations of his 
lot and the genius that was in him to the mighty 

549 



55o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

strength needed to guide our great country through the 
titanic struggle of the Civil War. 

The sense of equality was his, also by virtue of his 
pioneer training — a consciousness fostered by life from 
childhood to manhood in a state of society where 
there were neither rich to envy nor poor to despise, 
where the gifts and hardships of the forest were distrib- 
uted impartially to each, and where men stood indeed 
equal before the forces of unsubdued nature. 

The same great forces taught liberality, modesty, 
charity, sympathy — in a word, neighborliness. In that 
hard life, far removed from the artificial aids and com- 
forts of civilization, where all the wealth of Crcesus, 
had a man possessed it, would not have sufficed to pur- 
chase relief from danger, or help in time of need, neigh- 
borliness became of prime importance. A good neigh- 
bor doubled his safety and his resources, a group of 
good neighbors increased his comfort and his pros- 
pects in a ratio that grew like the cube root. Here was 
opportunity to practise that virtue that Christ declared 
to be next to the love of God — the fruitful injunction 
to "love thy neighbor as thyself." 

Here, too, in communities far from the customary 
restraints of organized law, the common native intel- 
ligence of the pioneer was brought face to face with 
primary and practical questions of natural right. 
These men not only understood but appreciated the 
American doctrine of self-government. It was this 
understanding, this feeling, which taught Lincoln to 
write: "When the white man governs himself, that is 
self-government ; but when he governs himself and also 
governs another man, that is more than self-govern- 
ment — that is despotism"; and its philosophic corol- 
lary: "He who would be no slave must consent to 
have no slave." 



EARLY ENVIRONMENT 551 

Abraham Lincoln sprang from exceptional condi- 
tions — was in truth, in the language of Lowell, a 
"new birth of our new soil." But this distinction was 
not due alone to mere environment. The ordinary 
man, with ordinary natural gifts, found in Western 
pioneer communities a development essentially the same 
as he would have found under colonial Virginia or 
Puritan New England : a commonplace life, varying 
only with the changing ideas and customs of time and 
locality. But for the man with extraordinary powers 
of body and mind ; for the individual gifted by nature 
with the genius which Abraham Lincoln possessed; 
the pioneer condition, with its severe training in self- 
denial, patience, and industry, was favorable to a de- 
velopment of character that helped in a preeminent 
degree to qualify him for the duties and responsibilities 
of leadership and government. He escaped the formal 
conventionalities which beget insincerity and dissim- 
ulation. He grew up without being warped by erro- 
neous ideas or false principles ; without being dwarfed 
by vanity, or tempted by self-interest. 

Some pioneer communities carried with them the 
institution of slavery; and in the slave State of Ken- 
tucky Lincoln was born. He remained there only a 
short time, and we have every reason to suppose that 
wherever he might have grown to maturity his very 
mental and moral fiber would have spurned the doctrine 
and practice of human slavery. And yet so subtle is 
the influence of birth and custom, that we can trace one 
lasting effect of this early and brief environment. 
Though he ever hated slavery, he never hated the slave- 
holder. This ineradicable feeling of pardon and sym- 
pathy for Kentucky and the South played no insig- 
nificant part in his dealings with grave problems of 
statesmanship. He struck slavery its death-blow with 



552 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the hand of war, But he tendered the slaveholder a 
golden equivalent with the hand of friendship and 
peace. 

His advancement in the astonishing career which 
carried him from obscurity to world-wide fame; from 
postmaster of New Salem village to President of the 
United States; from captain of a backwoods volunteer 
company to commander-in-chief of the army and navy, 
was neither sudden, nor accidental, nor easy. He was 
both ambitious and successful, but his ambition was 
moderate and his success was slow. And because his 
success was slow, his ambition never outgrew either 
his judgment or his powers. From the day when he 
left the paternal roof and launched his canoe on the 
head waters of the Sangamon River to begin life on 
his own account, to the day of his first inauguration, 
there intervened full thirty years of toil, of study, self- 
denial, patience; often of effort baffled, of hope de- 
ferred ; sometimes of bitter disappointment. Given the 
natural gift of great genius, given the condition of 
favorable environment, it yet required an average life- 
time and faithful unrelaxing effort to transform the 
raw country stripling into a competent ruler for this 
great nation. 

Almost every success was balanced — sometimes over- 
balanced by a seeming failure. Reversing the usual 
promotion, he went into the Black Hawk War a cap- 
tain, and, through no fault of his own, came out a pri- 
vate. He rode to the hostile frontier on horseback, and 
trudged home on foot. His store "winked out." His 
surveyor's compass and chain, with which he was earn- 
ing a scanty living, were sold for debt. He was de- 
feated in his first campaign for the legislature ; defeated 
in his first attempt to be nominated for Congress ; de- 
feated in his application to be appointed commissioner 



HIS REAL SUCCESSES 553 

of the General Land Office ; defeated for the Senate in 
the Illinois legislature of 1854, when he had forty- 
five votes to begin with, by Trumbull, who had only 
five votes to begin with ; defeated in the legislature of 
1858, by an antiquated apportionment, when his joint 
debates with Douglas had won him a popular plural- 
ity of nearly four thousand in a Democratic State; 
defeated in the nomination for Vice-President on the 
Fremont ticket in 1856, when a favorable nod from 
half a dozen wire- workers would have brought him 
success. 

Failures? Not so. Every seeming defeat was a 
slow success. His was the growth of the oak, and not 
of Jonah's gourd. Every scaffolding of temporary 
elevation he pulled down, every ladder of transient ex- 
pectation which broke under his feet accumulated his 
strength, and piled up a solid mound which raised him 
to wider usefulness and clearer vision. He could not 
become a master workman until he had served a tedious 
apprenticeship. It was the quarter of a century of read- 
ing, thinking, speech-making and legislating which 
qualified him for selection as the chosen champion of 
the Illinois Republicans in the great Lincoln-Douglas 
joint debates of 1858. It was the great intellectual vic- 
tory won in these debates, plus the title "Honest old 
Abe," won by truth and manhood among his neighbors 
during a whole generation, that led the people of the 
United States to confide to his hands the duties and 
powers of President. 

And when, after thirty years of endeavor, success 
had beaten down defeat; when Lincoln had been nom- 
inated, elected, and inaugurated, came the crowning 
trial of his faith and constancy. When the people, by 
free and lawful choice, had placed honor and power in 
his hands ; when his signature could convene Congress, 



554 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

approve laws, make ministers, cause ships to sail and 
armies to move; when he could speak with potential 
voice to other rulers of other lands, there suddenly 
came upon the government and the nation the symp- 
toms of a fatal paralysis ; honor seemed to dwindle and 
power to vanish. Was he then, after all, not to be 
President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Consti- 
tution waste paper? Was the Union gone? 

The indications were, indeed, ominous. Seven States 
were in rebellion. There was treason in Congress, 
treason in the Supreme Court, treason in the army and 
navy. Confusion and discord rent public opinion. To 
use Lincoln's own forcible simile, sinners were calling 
the righteous to repentance. Finally, the flag, insulted 
on the Star of the West, trailed in capitulation at Sum- 
ter; and then came the humiliation of the Baltimore 
riot, and the President practically for a few days a 
prisoner in the capital of the nation. 

But his apprenticeship had been served, and there 
was no more failure. With faith and justice and gen- 
erosity he conducted for four long years a civil war 
whose frontiers stretched from the Potomac to the 
Rio Grande; whose soldiers numbered a million men 
on each side; in which, counting skirmishes and battles 
small and great, was fought an average of two en- 
gagements every day ; and during which every twenty- 
four hours saw an expenditure of two millions of 
money. The labor, the thought, the responsibility, the 
strain of intellect and anguish of soul that he gave to 
this great task, who can measure? 

The sincerity of the fathers of the Republic was im- 
pugned; he justified them. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was called a "string of glittering generali- 
ties" and a "self-evident lie" ; he refuted the aspersion. 
The Constitution was perverted ; he corrected the error. 
The flag was insulted ; he redressed the offense. The 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 555 

government was assailed; he restored its authority. 
Slavery thrust the sword of civil war at the heart of the 
nation; he crushed slavery, and cemented the purified 
Union in new and stronger bonds. 

And all the while conciliation was as active as vin- 
dication was stern. He reasoned and pleaded with 
the anger of the South; he gave insurrection time to 
repent; he forbore to execute retaliation; he offered 
recompense to slaveholders; he pardoned treason. 

What but lifetime schooling in disappointment; 
what but the pioneer's self-reliance and freedom from 
prejudice; what but the patient faith, the clear percep- 
tions of natural right, the unwarped sympathy and un- 
bounding charity of this man with spirit so humble 
and soul so great, could have carried him through the 
labors he wrought to the victory he attained ? 

As the territory may be said to be its body, and its 
material activities its blood, so patriotism may be said 
to be the vital breath of a nation. When patriotism 
dies, the nation dies, and its resources as well as its 
territory go to other peoples with stronger vitality. 

Patriotism can in no way be more effectively cul- 
tivated than by studying and commemorating the 
achievements and virtues of our great men — the men 
who have lived and died for the nation, who have ad- 
vanced its prosperity, increased its power, added to its 
glory. In our brief history the United States can 
boast of many great men, and the achievement by its 
sons of many great deeds; and if we accord the first 
rank to Washington as founder, so we must unhesitat- 
ingly give to Lincoln the second place as preserver 
and regenerator of American liberty. So far, how- 
ever, from being opposed or subordinated either to the 
other, the popular heart has already canonized these 
two as twin heroes in our national pantheon, as twin 
stars in the firmament of our national fame. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Able, Mrs., sister of Mary Owens, 55, 

Adams, Charles Francis, member of 
Congress, United States minister to Eng- 
land, sent to England, 211 

Alabama, State of, admitted as State, 1819, 
T 9 

Alabama, the, Confederate cruiser, sunk by 
the Kearsarge, 525 

Albemarle, the, Confederate ironclad, 
destruction of, October 27, 1864, 525 

Albert, Prince Consort, drafts note to 
Lord Russell about Trent affair, 247 

Alexander II, Czar of Russia, emanci- 
pates Russian serf-., 101 

Alexandria, Virginia, occupation of, 214 

American Party, principles of, 101, 102 ; 
nominates Millard Fillmore for Presi- 
dent, 1856, 102 

Anderson, Robert, brevet major-general 
United States army, transfers his com- 
mand to Fort Sumter, 177, 178; reports 
condition of Fort Sumter, 182; notified 
of coming relief, 188 ; defense and sur- 
render of Fort Sumter, 189, 190; telegram 
about Fremont's proclamation, 240; sends 
Sherman to Nashville, 254 ; turns over 
command to Sherman, 254 ; raises flag 
over Fort Sumter, 531 

Antietam, Maryland, battle of, September 
17, 1862, 315 

Arkansas, State of, joins Confederacy, 200, 
204; military governor appointed for, 
419; reconstruction 111,426,427; slavery 
abolished in, 427 ; slavery in, throttled by 
public opinion, 473 ; ratifies Thirteenth 
Amendment, 475 

Armies of the United States, enlistment 
in, since beginning of the war, 353, 354; 
numbers under Grant's command, March, 
1865, 507; reduction of, to peace footing, 
527; grand review of, 527-520 

Armstrong, Jack, wrestles with Lincoln, 
25 

Arnold, Samuel, in conspiracy to assas- 
sinate Lincoln, 5t4 : imprisoned, 544 

Atlanta, Georgia, siege of, July 22 to Sep- 
tember 1, 1864, 407 

Atzerodt, George, in conspiracy to assas- 
sinate Lincoln, 534; assigned to murder 
Andrew Johnson, 535 ; deposits arms in 
tavern at Surrattsville, 536; execution of, 



Bailey, Theodorus, rear-admiral United 
States navy, in expedition against New 
Orleans, 284 



Bailhache, William H., prints Lincoln's 
first inaugural. 168 

Baker, Edward D., member of Congress, 
United States senator, brevet major-gen- 
eral United States Volunteers, at Spring- 
field, Illinois, 52; nominated for Congress, 
73 ; in Mexican War, 75 

Ball's Bluff, Virginia, battle of, October, 
21, 1861, 262 

Baltimore, Maryland, Massachusetts Sixth 
mobbed in, 193 ; occupied by General 
Butler, 199 ; threatened by Early, 403 ; 
funeral honors to Lincoln in, 546 

Bancroft, George, Secretary of the Navy, 
historian, minister to Prussia, letter to 
Lincoln, 321 

Banks, Nathaniel P., Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, major-general 
United States Volunteers, in Army of 
Virginia, 310; forces under, for defense of 
Washington, 317; operations against Port 
Hudson, 382; captures Port Hudson, 
383,384; reply to Lincoln, 425; causes 
election of State officers in Louisiana, 
425, 426 ; opinion of new Louisiana con- 
stitution, 426 

Barton, William, governor of Delaware, 
reply to Lincoln's call for volunteers, 
' '93 

Bates, Edward, member of Congress, 
Attorney-General, candidate for presiden- 
tial nomination, i860, 144; vote for, in 
Chicago convention, 149; tendered cab- 
inet appointment, 163; appointed Attor- 
ney-General, 182; signs cabinet protest, 
311; rewrites cabinet protest, 312; re- 
signs from cabinet, 491 

Beauregard, G. T., Confederate general, 
reduces Fort Sumter, 188-190; in com- 
mand at Manassas Junction, 215; under- 
standing with Johnston, 216; battle of 
Bull Run, July 21, 1861, 226-229; coun- 
cil with Johnston and Hardee, 267 ; suc- 
ceeds to command at Pittsburg Landing, 
273; losses at Pittsburg Landing, 274; 
evacuates Corinth, 275 ; united with 
Hood, 409 ; orders Hood to assume offen- 
sive, 410; interview with Davis and 
Johnston, 520 

Bell, John, member of Congress, Secretary 
ol War, United States senator, nominated 
for President, i860, 143; vote for, 160 

Benjamin, Judah P., United States sen- 
ator, Confederate Secretary of State, sug- 
gestions about instructions to peace 
commissioners, 482; last instructions to 
Slidell, 501, 502 



559 



560 



INDEX 



Berry, William F., partner of Lincoln 

in a store, 35; death of, 36 
Big Bethel, V :, 214 

Blackburn's Ford, Virginia, ei . 

at, July 18, 1861, 226 
Black riawk, . bief 1 I I 

Black, Jeremiah S., Attornej 

Douglas, 114 
Blair, Francis P., Sr., quarrel with I re- 

178; wterviewi with 
Davis, 470^483 . 

Blair, Francis P., Jr.. 

untccr^ iniaircl with I 
488 
Blair, Montgot:' 

rcl with ! 

. 1 

I 

Bogue, Captain Vincent, 

I 

Boonville. M ttfc of, June 17. 

Booth, John Wilkes. ; 

I 

■ 

' 
I 

Breckinridge, John C 

■ 

■ 

ment, 
Breckinridge, Robert J.. 1> ! 

man Republican national 

convent 
Brown, Albert G., member of I 

United State senator, question 






129: demands congressional slave c .de, 

141 
Brown, John, \ Ferry, 

trial am! 1 
Brown, Joseph E., governor 1 I I 

■!. 48 



obey 



Browning, Orville H 

. 
11,151 
Browning, Mrs. O. H., Lincoln's letter 

William Cullcn 

Buchanan, Franklin. 

Buchanan, Jnn 

■ 

■ 



Bucknei 

Buell, Don Car! 






M 



.■ ; 



lutler, BenjaiT : 

I 

to, a!» <is land 



" 



S6i 



' 






■ ■ . ■ 



■■■ 






by military ccr- - r^es that 

-icrapted in final 

eauocrpauoa 4 -, ; sub- 

| paragraph, 344 ; 

< <t 1 : letter 

cabinet, 

n the po- 

. < '.ipon by 

tentative in the 

- tgomery 
490, 401 ; 
. 
ith of office 

battle of, No- 
- ot, Scp- 
cnt of, 34 

- ■ 

Cochrane, John 

I 
of, June 

- 

- 

Columbia 

Columbus 

- utei of Amen... 

■ 

' "f, tire 

I 

• 
nd, ao7 ; 
■ ■■ 

ltk>n and 

, 151 : efficiency 

, pnx Linijiinn 

-Herman's 

. < 'ilr of col- 

Iwnr of 

« 

• 

ikes l.ee 

mber of toldien 

in fin/ Sigh) "f, from 

rendered, 

Congreia of the United Statr- 

.; territory of Illinois, 19- 



562 



INDEX 



fixes number of stars and stripes in the 
flag, 19 ; admits as States Illinois, Ala- 
bama, Maine, and Missouri, 10; nullifi- 
cation debate in, 38; Lincoln's service in, 
75-90; Missouri Compromise, 94-96; 
Democratic majorities chosen in, in 1856, 
108; agitation over Kansas in, 113; 
Senator Brown's resolutions, 141 ; official 
count of electoral votes, 160; appoints 
compromise committees, 167; Buchanan's 
annual message to, December, i860, 176, 
177 ; convened in special session by Presi- 
dent Lincoln, 192; Lincoln's message to, 
May 26, 1862, 195; legalizes Lincoln's 
war measures, 206 ; meeting and mea- 
sures of special session of Thirty-seventh 
Congress, 217-220; Southern unionists 
in, 217; Lincoln's message to, July 4, 

1861, 218-220; action on slavery, 223; 
special session adjourns, 223 : House 
passes resolution of thanks to Captain 
Wilkes, 246; friendly to McClellan, 250; 
Lincoln's message of Decembers, 1861, 
2 57. 3 2 !> 3 22 '• interview of border State 
delegations with Lincoln, 257, 25S, 324, 
325 ; Lincoln's special message, March 6, 

1862, 323, 324 ; passes joint resolution 
favoring compensated emancipation, 325 ; 
passes bill for compensated emancipation 
in District of Columbia, 325, 326; House 
bill to aid emancipation in Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennes- 
see, and Missouri, 326 ; slavery measures 
of 1862, 329; President's second inter- 
view with border slave State delegations, 
£•9-331 ; President's annual message, 
December 1, 1862, 341, 342; passes na- 
tional conscription law, 354, 355 ; act au- 
thorizing the President to suspend writ of 
habeas corpus, 359, 360 ; confers rank of 
lieutenant-general on Grant, 303; admits 
representatives and senators from States 
with provisional governments, 419; Presi- 
dent's annual message, December 8. 1863, 
424 ; reverses former action about seating 
members from " ten-per-cent. States," 424; 
bills to aid compensated abolishment in 
Missouri, 432 ; opposition to Lincoln in, 
454 ; action on bill of Henry Winter 
Davis, 454 ; repeals fugitive-slave law, 
457 ; confirms Fessenden's nomination, 
458; Lincoln's message of December 5, 
1864, 470-472 ; joint resolution proposing 
constitutional amendment to prohibit 
slavery throughout United States, 471- 
476; the two constitutional amendments 
submitted to the States during Lincoln's 
term, 475, 476; Senate confirms Chase's 
nomination as chief justice, 491 

Congress, the, Union sailing frigate, 
burned by Merrimac, 280 

Constitutional Union Party, candidates 
in i860, 153 

Conventions : first national convention of 
Whig party, 28; President Jackson gives 
impetus to system of, 52 ; Illinois State 
convention nominates Lincoln for Con- 
gress, 74, 75; convention of "Know- 



Nothing" party, 1856, 102; Bloomington 
convention, May, 1856, 103; first national 
convention of Republican party, June 17, 
1856, 103 ; Democratic national conven- 
tion, June 2, 1856, 104; Democratic na- 
tional convention, Charleston, April 23, 
i860, 142 ; it adjourns to reassemble at 
Baltimore, June 18, i860, 143; Constitu- 
tional Union Convention, Baltimore, May 
9, i860, 143; Republican national con- 
vention, Chicago, May 16, i860, 144, 147- 
151; Decatur, Illinois, State convention, 
154; Cleveland convention, May 31, 
1864, 441, 442 ; meeting in New York to 
nominate Grant, 442,443: New Hamp- 
shire State convention, January 6, 1864, 
443; Republican national convention, 
June 7, 1864, 446-449; Democratic na- 
tional convention, 1864, postponed, 463 ; 
Democratic national convention meets, 
466-468 ; resolution of Baltimore conven- 
tion hostile to Montgomery Blair, 487 

Cook, B. C, member of Congress, nomi- 
nates Lincoln in Baltimore convention, 
447 ; seeks to learn Lincoln's wishes 
about Vice- Presidency, 448 

Cooper, Samuel, Confederate adjutant- 
general, joins the Confederacy, 208 

Corbett, Boston, sergeant United States 
army, shoots Booth, 543 

Corinth, Mississippi, captured by Halleck, 
275 

Couch, Darius N., major-general United 
States Volunteers, militia force under, in 
Pennsylvania, 372 

Cox, Samuel, assists Booth and Herold, 542 

Crawford, Andrew, teacher of President 
Lincoln, 12 

Crittenden, John J., Attorney-General, 
United States senator, advocates reelec- 
iton of Douglas to United States Senate, 
126; in Thirty-seventh Congress, 217; 
presents resolution, 223 

Cumberland, the, Union frigate, sunk by 
Merrimac, 280 

Curtis, Samuel R., member of Congress, 
major-general United States Volunteers, 
sends order of removal to Fremont, 242, 
243; campaign in Missouri, 269; victory 
at Pea Ridge, 271 

Cushing, William B., commander 
United States navy, destruction of the 
Albemarle, 525 

Dahlgren, John A., rear-admiral United 
States navy, at gathering of officials to 
discuss fight between Monitor and 
Merrimac, 296 

Davis, Henry Winter, member of Con- 
gress, bill prescribing method of recon- 
struction, 454 ; signs Wade-Davis mani- 
festo, 456 

Davis, Jefferson, Secretary of War, 
United States senator, Confederate Presi- 
dent, orders that "rebellion must be 
crushed " in Kansas, 113; Senate resolu- 
tions of, 141 ; signs address commending 
Charleston disruption, 143; statement in 



INDEX 



563 



Senate, 143: elected President of Con- 
federate States of America, 179; telegram 
to Governor Letcher, 197 ; proclamation 
offering letters of marque to privateers, 
205; camp of instruction at Harper's 
Ferry, 209 ; proclamation of outlawry, 350; 
message on emancipation proclamation, 
35°> 35 1 : appoints Hood to succeed 
Johnston, 407; visits Hood, and unites 
commands of Beauregard and Hood, 409 ; 
interview with Jaquess and Gilmore, 462 ; 
interviews with F. P. Blair, Sr., 479-4S1 ; 
gives Blair a letter to show Lincoln, 481 ; 
appoints peace commission, 482; in- 
structions to peace commissioners, 482: 
reports Hampton Roads conference to 
rebel Congress, 485 ; speech at public 
meeting, 485, 486; Confederate Congress 
shows hostility to, 500, 501 ; reappoints 
J. E. Johnston to resist Sherman, 501; 
recommendations concerning slaves in 
rebel army, 301 ; sanctions Lee's letter to 
Grant, 503 ; conference with Lee, 504 ; 
flight from Richmond, 515; proclamation 
from, Danville, 519, 520; retreat to Greens- 
boro, North Carolina, 520; interview with 
Johnston and Beauregard, 520; con- 
tinues southward, 520; dictates proposi- 
tion of armistice presented by Johnston 
to Sherman, 521: requires report from 
Breckinridge about Johnston-SheTman 
agreement, 523; instructions to John- 
ston, 524 : attempt to reach E. Kirby 
Smith, 525, 526 ; effort to gain Florida 
coast, 526; capture, imprisonment, and 
release of, 526 

Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, captured with her 
husband, 526 

Dawson, John, defeated for Illinois legis- 
lature, 1832, 34 ; elected in 1834, 43 

Dayton, William L., United States sen- 
ator, minister to France, nominated for 
Vice-President, 104; vote for, in Chicago 
convention, 149 

Delano, Columbus, member of Congress, 
Secretary of the Interior, in Baltimore 
convention, 447 

Delaware, State of, secession feeling in, 
201; rejects compensated abolishment, 
3". 323 

Democratic Party, party of slavery ex- 
tension, 102; nominates Buchanan and 
Breckinridge in 1856, 104; disturbed by 
Buchanan's attitude on slavery, 116; pro- 
slavery demands of, 140, 141 : national 
conventions of, 1860, 142-144; candidates 
in i860, 152, 153; opposition to emanci- 
pation measures and conscription law, 
354. 355: adopts McClellan for presiden- 
tial candidate, 355 ; interest in Vallandig- 
ham, 358 ; attitude on slavery, 437, 438, 
47 2 > 473 '• convention postponed, 463 ; 
national convention, 1864, 466-468 

Dennison, William, governor of Ohio, 
Postmaster-General, permanent chairman 
of Republican national convention, 1864, 
446 ; succeeds Blair as Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, 489, 490 



Dickinson, Daniel S., United States sen- 
ator, candidate for vice-presidential nom- 
ination, 1864, 448, 449 

Doherty, E. P., lieutenant United States 
army, captures Booth and Herold, 543 

Donelson, Andrew J., nominated for 
Vice-President, 102 

Dorsey, Azel W., teacher of President 
Lincoln, 12 

Douglas, Stephen A., member of Con- 
gress, United States senator, at Spring- 
field, Illinois, 52; challenges young Whigs 
of Springfield to debate, 62 ; elected to 
United States Senate, 75 ; champions re- 
peal of Missouri Compromise, 95 ; speech 
at Illinois State fair, 9O ; at Peoria, 96; 
agreement with Lincoln, 99 ; on Dred 
Scott case, 109, no; denounces Lecomp- 
ton Constitution, 116, 117; hostility of 
Buchanan administration toward, 117; 
Lincoln-Douglas joint debate, 121-125; 
speeches in the South, 128, 129; answer 
to Senator Brown, 129; references to Lin- 
coln, 130; Ohio speeches, 133; "Harper's 
Magazine" essay, 134 ; fight over nomi- 
nation of, for President, i860, 142-144 ; 
nominated for President, 143 ; speeches 
during campaign of i860, 156; vote for, 
160 

Douglass, Frederick, conversation with 
Lincoln, 352 

Draft, Congress passes national conscrip- 
tion law, 354 ; opposition of Governor 
Seymour to, 355-357 ; riots in New York, 
356, 357. dissatisfaction in other places, 
357> opposition of Vallandigham to, 358 

Dred Scott case, decision of Supreme 
Court in, 108, 109; protest of North 
against, 109 ; Senator Douglas on, 109, 
no 

Dresser, Rev. Charles, marries Abra- 
ham Lincoln and Mary Todd, 68, 69 

DuPont, Samuel F., rear-admiral United 
States navy, commands fleet in Port Royal 
expedition, 245 

Durant, Thomas J., mentioned in letter 
of Lincoln's, 334, 335 

Early, Jubal A., Confederate lieutenant- 
general, threatens Washington, 403 ; in- 
flicts damage on Blair's estate, 488 

Eckert, Thomas T., brevet brigadier- 
general L T nited States Volunteers, sent to 
meet peace commissioners at Hampton 
Roads, 482 ; refuses to allow peace com- 
missioners to proceed, 483 

Edwards, Cyrus, desires commissioner- 
ship of General Land Office, 92 

Edwards, Ninian W., one of "Long 
Nine," 63 

Edwards, Mrs. Ninian W., sister of 
Mrs. Lincoln, 63 

Ellsworth, E. E., colonel United States 
Volunteers, assassination of, 214 

Emancipation, Lincoln-Stone protest, 47; 
Lincoln's bill for, in District of Columbia, 
86, 87: Missouri Compromise, 94, 05; 
Fremont's proclamation of, 236-238 ; dis- 



5^4 



INDEX 



cussed in President's message of December 
3, 1861, 321, 323; Lincoln offers Delaware 
compensated abolishment, 322, 323 ; spe- 
cial message of March 6, 1862, 323, 324 ; 
Congress passes bill for, in District of 
Columbia, 325, 326 ; bill to aid it in border 
slave States, 326 ; Hunter's order of, 327 ; 
measures in Congress relating to, 328, 



320; 



Lincoln's second interview with 



delegations from border slave States, 329- 
331 ; Lincoln's conversation with Carpen- 
ter about, 331, 332; first draft of emanci- 
pation proclamation read to cabinet, 331, 
332; President's interview with Chicago 
clergymen, 337-339/ Lincoln issues pre- 
liminary emancipation proclamation, 339- 
341 ; annual message of December 1, 1862, 
341, 342; President issues final emancipa- 
tion proclamation, 342-346; President's 
views on, 346, 347 ; arming of negro sol- 
diers, 348, 350; Lincoln's letters to Banks 
about emancipation in Louisiana, 423-425!; 
slavery abolished in Louisiana, 426; sla- 
very abolished in Arkansas, 427 ; slavery 
abolished in Tennessee, 429; slavery 
abolished in Missouri, 43 2 ~434 '■ Maryland 
refuses offer of compensated abolishment, 
434 ; slavery abolished in Maryland, 435, 
436 ; Republican national platform favors 
Constitutional amendment abolishing 
slavery, 446; Constitutional amendment 
prohibiting slavery in United States, 471- 
476; two Constitutional amendments af- 
fecting slavery offered during Lincoln's 
term, 475,476; Lincoln's draft of joint 
resolution offering the South $400,000,000, 
493 ; Jefferson Davis recommends em- 
ployment of negroes in army, with eman- 
cipation to follow, 501. See Slavery 

England, public opinion in, favorable to 
the South, 211 ; excitement in, over Trent 
affair, 246; joint expedition to Mexico, 
451; "neutrality" of, 525 

Ericsson, John, inventor of the Monitor, 

2 79 
Evarts, William M., Secretary of State, 
United States senator, nominates Seward 
for President, 149 ; moves to make Lin- 



Everett, Edward, member of Congress, 
minister to England, Secretary of State, 
United States senator, candidate for Vice- 
President, i860, 153 

Ewell, Richard S., Confederate lieuten- 
ant-general, in retreat to' Appomattox, 511 ; 
statement about burning of Richmond, 
516 

Ewing, Thomas, Secretary of the Inte- 
rior, defended by Lincoln against political 
attack, 92 

Fair Oaks, Virginia, battle of, 302 
Farragut, David G., admiral United 
States navy, captures New Orleans and 
ascends the Mississippi, 282-287 : ascends 
Mississippi a second time, 287 ; men- 
tioned, 328, 329, 381 ; operations against 
Port Hudson, 382 ; Mobile Bay, 468, 525 



Farrand, Ebenezer, captain Confederate 

navy, surrender of, 525 

Fessenden, William P., United States 
senator, Secretary of the Treasury, be- 
comes Secretary of the Treasury, 4 s8 ; 
agrees with President against making 
proffers of peace to Davis, 463 ; resigns 
from cabinet, 491, 492 

Field, David Dudley, escorts Lincoln 
to platform at Cooper Institute, 138 

Fillmore, Millard, thirteenth President of 
the United States, nominated by Know- 
Nothing party for President, 1856, 102 

Five Forks, Virginia, battle of, April 1, 
1865, 507-509 

Floyd, John B., Secretary of War, Con- 
federate brigadier-general, escapes from 
Fort Donelson, 268 

Foote, Andrew H., rear-admiral United 
States navy, capture of Island No. 10, 
274 ; proceeds to Fort Pillow, 274 

Forrest, Nathan B., Confederate lieuten- 
ant-general, with Hood's army, 410; 
defeat of, 525 

Fort Donelson, Tennessee, capture of, 
266-268 

Fort Fisher, North Carolina, capture of, 
414, 481. 525 

Fort Harrison, Virginia, capture of, 500 

Fort Henry, Tennessee, capture of, 266 

Fort Jackson, Louisiana, capture of, 282- 
28 5 

Fort McAllister, Georgia, stormed by 
Sherman, 412 

Fort Pillow, Tennessee, evacuation of, 
286; massacre of negro troops at, 351 

Fort Pulaski. Georgia, capture of, 278 

Fort Randolph, Tennessee, evacuation 
of, 286 

Fort Stedman, Virginia, assault of, 
505, 506 

Fort St. Philip, Louisiana, capture of, 
282-285 

Fort Sumter, South Carolina, occupied 
by Anderson, 177, 178; attempt to rein- 
force, 178; cabinet consultations about, 
182-184; defense and capture of, 189, 190 

Fortress Monroe, Virginia, importance 
of, 209 

Fox, Gustavus V., Assistant Secretary 
of the Navy, ordered to aid Sumter, 184; 
sends the President additional news about 
fight between Monitor and Merrimac, 
296, 297 

France, public opinion in, favorable to the 
South, 211; joint expedition to Mexico, 
451 ; "neutrality" of, 525 

Franklin, Benjamin, on American for- 
ests, and the spirit of independence they 
fostered, 17 
Franklin, Tennessee, battle of, November 

30, 1864, 410 
Franklin, W. B., brevet major-general 
United States army, advises movement 
on Manassas, 289 
Fredericksburg, Virginia, battle of, De- 
cember 13, 1862, 364 
Fremont, John C, United States senator, 



INDEX 



565 



major-general United States army, nomi- 
nated for President, 1856, 103 ; made 
major-general, 233; opportunities and limi- 
tations of, 233-235 ; criticism of, 235 ; quar- 
rel with Blair family, 236, 487; proclama- 
tion freeing slaves, 236, 237, 432; refuses 
to revoke proclamation, 238; removed 
from command of Western Department, 
241-243; commands Mountain Depart- 
ment, 299; ordered to form junction with 
McDowell and Shields, 306 ; in Army of 
Virginia, 310; nominated for President, 
1864, 442; withdraws from the contest, 
442 
Fusion, attempts at, in campaign of i860, 
157. 158 

Gamble, Hamilton R., provisional gov- 
ernor of Missouri, calls State convention 
together, 433 ; death of, 434 

Garnett, Robert S., Confederate briga- 
adier-general, killed at Carrick's Ford, 
22s 

Gentry, Allen, makes flatboat trip with 
Lincoln, 16 

Gentry, James, enters land at Gentry- 
ville, 9; sends Lincoln to New Orleans, 16 

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, battle of, July 
1-3, 1863,372-375; address of Mr. Lincoln 
at » 3?6» 377 

Giddings, Joshua R., member of Con- 
gress, approves Lincoln's bill abolishing 
slavery in District of Columbia, 87; 
amendment to Chicago platform, 148, 149 

Gillmore, Quincy A., brevet major-gen- 
eral United States army, siege of Fort 
Pulaski, 278 

Gilmer, John A., member of Congress, 
tendered cabinet appointment, 164 

Gilmore, J. R., visits Jefferson Davis with 
Jaquess, 462 

Gist, William H., governor of South 
Carolina, inaugurates secession, 175 

Goldsborough, L. M., rear-admiral 
United States navy, commands fleet in 
Roanoke Island expedition, 277, 278 

Gordon, John B., Confederate lieutenant- 
general, United States senator, in assault 
of Fort Stedman, 504, 505 ; in defense of 
Petersburg, 509 

Graham, Mentor, makes Lincoln election 
clerk, 23, 24 ; advises Lincoln to study 
grammar, 25; aids Lincoln to study sur- 
veying, 40 

Grant, Ulysses S., eighteenth President of 
the United States, general, and general-in- 
chief United States army, early life, 264; 
letter offering services to War Depart- 
ment, 264, 265; commissioned by Gov- 
ernor Yates, 265 ; reconnaissance toward 
Columbus, 265 ; urges movement on Fort 
Henry, 265, 266; capture of Forts Henry 
and Donelson, 266-268; ordered forward 
to Savannah, 271 ; Pittsburg Landing, 
272-274 ; asks to be relieved, 275 ; co- 
operates with adjutant-general of the 
army in arming negroes, 350; repulses 
rebels at Iuka and Corinth, 380; Vicks- 
37 



burg campaign, 380-383 ; ordered to 
Chattanooga, 389 ; battle of Chattanooga, 
390, 391 ; pursuit of Bragg, 391, 392 ; 
speech on accepting commission of lieuten- 
ant-general, 394 ; visits Army of the Poto- 
mac and starts west, 394 ; placed in com- 
mand of all the armies, 394 ; conference 
with Sherman, 395; plan ot campaign, 
395, 397 : returns to Culpepper, 395 ; fear 
of presidential interference, 395, 396; let- 
ter to Lincoln, 396; strength and position 
of his army, 396, 397; instructions to 
Meade, 397 ; battle of the Wilderness, 398 ; 
Spottsylvania Court House, 398, 399 ; re- 
port to Washington, 399; Cold Harbor, 
399; letter to Washington, 399, 400; 
siege of Petersburg, 400-402 ; sends 
Wright to Washington, 403 ; withholds 
consent to Sherman's plan, 410; gives 
his consent, 411 ; orders to Sherman, 413; 
adopts Sherman's plan, 414 ; attempt to 
nominate him for President, 1864, 442, 
443 ; depressing influence on political sit- 
uation of his heavy fighting, 463; admits 
peace commissioners to his headquarters, 
483; despatch to Stanton, 484; pushing 
forward, 502; telegraphs Lee's letter to 
Washington, 503; reply to Lee, 504; 
orders to General Parke, 505 ; issues 
orders for the final movement of the war, 
506; number of men under his command in 
final struggle, 507 ; his plan, 507 ; battle of 
Five Forks, 507-509; orders Sheridan to 
get on Lee's line of retreat, 509, 510 ; sends 
Humphreys to Sheridan's assistance, 509; 
telegram to Lincoln, 509 ; pursuit of Lee, 
510-513; sends Sheridan's despatch to 
Lincoln, 511; correspondence with Lee, 
512, 513; receives Lee's surrender, 513- 
515; forbids salute in honor of Lee's sur- 
render, 515; visit to Lee, 515; goes to 
Washington, 515: learns terms of agree- 
ment between Sherman and Johnson, 
523 ; ordered to Sherman's headquarters, 
523 ; gives Sherman opportunity to mod- 
ify his report, 523, 524 ; at Lincoln's last 
cabinet meeting, 531 ; invited by Mrs. 
Lincoln to Ford's Theater, 536 

Grant, Mrs. U. S., invited by Mrs. Lin- 
coln to Ford's Theater, 536 

Greeley, Horace, hears Lincoln's Cooper 
Institute speech, 138; "open letter" to 
Lincoln, 335; Niagara Falls conference, 
458-461 ; effect of his mission on political 
situation, 464 

Halleck, Henry Wager, major-general 
and general-in-chief United States army, 
succeeds Fremont, 260; reluctance to 
cooperate with Buell, 263, 264; answers 
to Lincoln, 263, 264 ; instructions to 
('.rant, 264; orders Grant to take Fort 
Henry, 266; sends reinforcements to 
Grant, 567; asks for command in the 
West, 269 ; plans expedition under Pope, 
270; message to Buell, 270; telegrams to 
McClellan, 270; appeal to McClellan, 
271 ; commands Department of the Mis- 



566 



INDEX 



sissippi, 37i ; orders Pope to join him, 
274; march on Corinth, 275; capture of 
Corinth, 275; sends Buell to East Ten- 



nessee, 275 ; ordered to reinforce McClel- 
lan, 307; general-in-chief, 309; visit to 
McClellan, 309 ; orders Army of Potomac 
back to Acquia Creek, 309 ; letter to Mc- 
Clellan, 309, 310; orders McClellan to 
support Pope, 311; telegram to McClel- 
lan, 317; mentioned, 328, 320; asks to be 
relieved, 365; quarrel with Hooker, 372; 
urges Meade to active pursuit of Lee, 
375; plans for Western campaign, 379; 
urges Buell to move into East Tennessee, 
380; orders Rosecrans to advance, 385, 
386; at council to consider news of Chat- 
tanooga, 388; President's chief of staff, 
394 ; conduct during Early's raid, 403 ; 
note to War Department about Blair, 488; 
orders to Meade, 523 

Hamlin, Hannibal, United Statessenator, 
Vice-President, nominated for Vice-Presi- 
dent, 151 ; Cameron moves his renomina- 
tion, 447 ; candidate for vice-presidential 
nomination in 1864, 448, 449 

Hanks, John, tells of Lincoln's frontier 
labors, 15; flatboat voyage with Lincoln, 
22, 23; at Decatur convention, 154^ 

Hanks, Joseph, teaches Thomas Lincoln 
carpenter's trade, 5 

Hanks, Nancy. See Lincoln, Nancy 
Hanks 

Hardee, William J., lieutenant-colonel 
United States army, Confederate lieuten- 
ant-general, council with Johnston and 
Beauregard, 267 ; evacuates Savannah 
and Charleston, 415; joins Johnston, 416 

Hardin, John J., member of Congress, 
colonel United States Volunteers, at 
Springfield, Illinois, 52; elected to Con- 
gress, 73; killed in Mexican War, 75 

Harper's Ferry, Virginia, John Brown 
raid at, 134; burning of armory, 209: cap- 
tured by Lee, September 15, 1862, 315 

Harris, Miss Clara W., attends Ford's 
Theater with Mrs. Lincoln, 536; assists 
Mrs. Lincoln, 539 

Harrison, George M., Lincoln's mess- 
mate in Black Hawk War, 33 

Hartford, the, Union cruiser, Farragut's 
flagship, 284, 285 

Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, capture 
of forts at, August 29, 1861, 245 

Hay, John, assistant private secretary to 
Lincoln, brevet colonel and assistant 
adjutant-general United States Volun- 
teers, ambassador to England, Secretary of 
State, accompanies Mr. Lincoln to Wash- 
ington, 168 ; shows Lincoln letter of in- 
quiry about Vice-Presidency, 448 ; mission 
to Canada, 460; at Lincoln's death-bed, 540 

Hazel, Caleb, teacher of President Lin- 
coln, 6 

Herndon, A. G., defeated for Illinois 
legislature, 1832, 34 

Herndon, "Jim" and "Row," sell 
Lincoln and Berry their store, 35 

Herndon, William H., Lincoln's law 



partner, 158; assumes Lincoln's law 
business during campaign, 158 

Herold, David E., in conspiracy to assas- 
sinate Lincoln, 534 ; chosen to assist 
Booth, 536; deposits arms in tavern at 
Surrattsville, 536 ; accompanies Booth in 
his flight, 542, 543 ; capture of, 543 ; exe- 
cution of, 544 

Hicks, Thomas H., governor of Mary- 
land, United States senator, reply to Lin- 
coln's call foi volunteers, 193; speech at 
mass-meeting, 193; protest against land- 
ing of troops at Annapolis, 198; calls 
meeting of Maryland legislature, 198 

Holcomb, James P., Confederate agent 
in Canada, correspondence with Horace 
Greeley, 459 

Holt, Joseph, PostL .aster-General, Sec- 
retary of War, judge-advocate general 
United States army, calls Scott to Wash- 
ington, 172 ; report on Knights of the 
Golden Circle, 361 ; favored by Swett for 
Vice-President, 448; declines attorney- 
generalship, 491 

Hood, John B., Confederate general, suc- 
ceeds Johnston, 407; evacuates Atlanta, 
407, 468 ; truce with Sherman, 408 ; 
placed under command of Beauregard, 
409; moves to Tuscumbia, 410; Frank- 
lin and Nashville, 410; his movements 
delay reconstruction in Tennessee, 429 

Hooker, Joseph, brevet major-general 
United States army, succeeds Burnside 
in command of Army of the Potomac, 366 ; 
submits plan of campaign to Lincoln, 368 ; 
battle of Chancellorsville, 369, 370; criti- 
cism of, 370; foresees Lee's northward 
campaign, 370; proposes quick march to 
capture Richmond, 371 ; follows Lee, 
372 ; asks to be relieved, 372 ; ordered to 
reinforce Rosecrans, 388 ; reaches Chat- 
tanooga, 389 ; in battle of Chattanooga, 
390-391 

Hume, John F., moves that Lincoln's 
nomination be made unanimous, 447 

Humphreys, Andrew A., brevet major- 
general United States army, in recapture 
of Fort Stedman, 505, 506; ordered to 
assist Sheridan, 509 

Hunt, Randall, tendered cabinet appoint- 
ment, 164 

Hunter, David, brevet major-general, 
United States army, asked to assist Fre- 
mont, 235, 236; ordered to relieve Fre- 
mont, 243 ; order of emancipation, 327 ; 
experiment with negro soldiers, 348 ; de- 
clared an outlaw by Confederate War 
Department, 350 

Hunter, R. M. T., United States senator, 
Confederate Secretary of State, appointed 
peace commissioner, 482 ; at Hampton 
Roads conference, 482-485 

lies, Elijah, captain Illinois Volunteers, 
commands company in Black Hawk 
War, 33 

Illinois, State of, organized as Territory, 
1809, 19; admitted as State, 1818, 19; 



INDEX 



567 



legislative schemes of internal improve- 
ment, 44, 45 ; capital removed to Spring- 
field, 45; political struggles over slavery,45, 
46 ; Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign 
in, 118-125; ratifies Thirteenth Amend- 



269, 270 ; surrender of, 274 

Jackson, Andrew, seventh President of 
the United States, gives impetus to sys- 
tem of party caucuses and conventions, 

5 2 

Jackson, Claiborne F., governor of Mis- 
souri, attempts to force Missouri secession, 
202-204 ; flight to Springfield, Missouri, 
234 

Jackson, Thomas Jonathan (" Stone- 
wall "), Confederate lieutenant-general, 
Shenandoah valley campaign, 305, 306; 
mentioned, 328 ; killed at Chancellors- 
ville, 369 

Jaquess, James F.,D.D., colonel United 
States Volunteers, visits to the South, 
461, 462 ; interview with Jefferson Davis, 
462 

Jewett, William Cornell, letter to 
Greeley, 458 

Johnson, Andrew, seventeenth President 
of the United States, in thirty-seventh 
Congress, 217; telegram about East Ten- 
nessee, 259; retains seat in Senate, 419; 
appointed military governor of Tennessee, 
420; begins work of reconstruction, 428; 
nominated for Vice-President, 448, 449; 
popular and electoral votes for, 470; dis- 
approves Sherman's agreement with 
Johnston, 523 ; proclamation of amnesty, 
526 ; plot to murder, 535 ; rejoicing of 
radicals on his accession to the Presi- 
dency, 545; takes oath of office, 545 

Johnson, Herschel V., candidate for Vice- 
President, i860, 152 

Johnston, Albert Sidney, Confederate 
general, council with Hardee and Beaure- 
gard, 267 ; killed at Pittsburg Landing, 
273 

Johnston, John D., step-brother of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, flatboat voyage with Lin- 
coln, 22, 23 

Johnston, Joseph E., quartermaster- 
general United States army, Confederate 
general, member of Congress, joins Con- 
federacy, 196, 208 ; understanding with 
Beauregard, 215, 216; joins Beauregard at 
Bull Run, 228 ; opinion of battle of Bull 
Run, 228 ; retrograde movement, 297; 
defeats McClellan at Fair Oaks, 302; 
succeeds Bragg, 395 ; strength of, in 
spring of 1864, 405 ; superseded by Hood, 
407; again placed in command, 416, 501 ; 
interview with Davis, 520; begins nego- 
tiations with Sherman, 520 ; meetings 
with Sherman, 521, 522; agreement be- 
tween them, 522 ; agreement disapproved 
at Washington, 523 ; surrender of, 524 

Johnston, Sarah Bush, marries Thomas 
Lincoln, 10 ; improves the condition of 



his household, 10; tells of Lincoln's stu- 
dious habits, 13 

Jones, Thomas, assists Booth and Herold, 
542. 543 

Judd,. Norman B , minister to Prussia, 
member of Congress, nominates Lincoln 
for President, i860, 149 ; member of Lin- 
coln's suite, 173 

Kansas, State of, slavery struggle in, 113- 
115; Lecompton Bill defeated in Con- 
gress, 117 

Kearsarge, the, Union cruiser, battle with 
the A labama, 525 

Kelly, Benjamin F., brevet major-gen- 
eral United States Volunteers, dash upon 
Philippi, 225 

Kentucky, State of, action concerning 
secession, 201, 204 ; legislature asks An- 
derson for help, 254 ; public opinion in, 
regarding slavery, 473 

Kilpatrick, Judson, brevet major-general 
United States army, minister to Chili, 
with Sherman on march to the sea, 411 

Kirkpatrick, defeated for Illinois legisla- 
ture, 1832, 34 

Knights of Golden Circle, extensive 
organization of, 360, 361; plans and fail- 
ures of, 360-362 ; projected revolution in 
Northwestern States, 466 

Know-Nothing Party, principles of, 101, 
102; nominates Millard Fillmore for 
President, 1856, 102 

Lamon, 'Ward H., accompanies Lincoln 
on night journey to Washington, 174 

Lane, Joseph, brevet major-general United 
States army, governor, United States sen- 
ator, candidate for Vice-President in i860, 
153; attempt to arm negroes, 348 

Leavitt, Humphrey H., member of 
Congress, judge United States Circuit 
Court, denies motion for habeas corpus 
for Vallandigham, 358 

Lecompton Constitution, adopted in 
Kansas, 115; defeated in Congress, 117 

Lee, Robert E., colonel United States 
army, Confederate general, captures John 
Brown, 134; enters service of Confed- 
eracy, 196, 197, 208; concentrates troops 
at Manassas Junctionals; sends troops 
into West Virginia, 224 ; attacks Mc- 
Clellan near Richmond, 302; campaign 
into Maryland, 314 ; captures Harper's 
Ferry, 315; battle of Antietam, 315; re- 
treats across the Potomac, 316 ; battle of 
Chancellorsville, 369; resolves on invasion 
of the North, 370; crosses the Potomac, 
371, 372; battle of Gettysburg, 372-374; 
retreats across the Potomac, 375, 377; 
strength and position of his army, 397; 
battle of the Wilderness, 398 ; Spottsyl- 
vania Court House, 398, 399; Cold Har- 
bor, 390 ; defense of Petersburg, 400-402 ; 
sends Early up the Shenandoah valley, 
403 ; despatch about rations for his army, 
481 ; made general-in-chief, 500 ; assumes 
command of all the Confederate armies, 



568 



INDEX 



502 ; attempt to negotiate with Grant, 502, 
503 ; conference with Davis, 504 ; attempt 
to break through Grant's lines, 504-506 ; 
number of men under his command in 
final struggle, 507; takes command in 
person, 507 ; attacks Warren, 507 ; battle 
of Five Forks, 507-509; makes prepara- 
tions to evacuate Petersburg and Rich- 
mond, 509 ; begins retreat, 510; surrender 
of Richmond, 510; reaches Amelia Court 
House, 510; starts toward Lynchburg, 
511; reply to generals advising him to 
surrender, 512; correspondence with 
Grant, 512, 513; surrender of, 513-515; 
size of army surrendered by, 524 

Letcher, John, member of Congress, gov- 
ernor of Virginia, orders seizure of gov- 
ernment property, 194 

Lincoln, Abraham, sixteenth President 
of the United States, born February 12, 
1800, 3, 6; goes to A B C schools, 6 ; 
early schooling in Indiana, 10-13 ; home 
studies and youthful habits, 13-19; man- 
ages ferry-boat, 15; flatboat trip to New 
Orleans, 15, 16; employed in Gentryville 
store, 16; no hunter, 17; kills wild turkey, 
17, 18; emigrates to Illinois, March 1, 
1830, 20; leaves his father's cabin, 21 ; 
engaged by Denton Offutt, 21 ; builds 
flatboat and takes it to New Orleans, 22, 
23 ; incident at Rutledge's Mill, 22 ; re- 
turns to New Salem, 23; election clerk, 
23, 24 ; clerk in Offutt's store, 24 ; wrestles 
with Jack Armstrong, 25; candidate for 
legislature, 1832, 29; address "To the 
Voters of Sangamon County," 29, 30; 
volunteers for Black Hawk War, 32 ; 
elected captain of volunteer company, 32; 
mustered out and reenlists as private, 
32, 33 ; finally mustered out, 33 ; returns 
to New Salem, 33; defeated for legisla- 
ture, 33; enters into partnership with 
Berry, 35 ; sells out to the Trent brothers, 
36 ; fails, but promises to pay his debts, 
36; surveying instruments sold for debt, 
36; "Honest old Abe," 37; appointed 
postmaster of New Salem, 37; made 
deputy surveyor, 39, 40 ; candidate for 
legislature, 1834, 41, 42; elected to legis- 
lature, 43 ; begins study of law, 44 ; ad- 
mitted to practice, 44 ; removes to Spring- 
field and forms law partnership with J. T. 
Stuart, 44 ; reelected to legislature, 44 ; 
services in legislature, 44-48 ; manages 
removal of State capital to Springfield, 
45; Lincoln-Stone protest, 47; vote for, 
for Speaker of Illinois House, 48 ; his 
methods in law practice, 49 ; notes for law 
lecture, 49-51 ; his growing influence, 52; 
guest of William Butler, 53; intimacy 
with Joshua F. Speed, 53 ; engaged to 
Anne Rutledge, 54; her death, 54; his 
grief, 55 ; courtship of Mary Owens, 55- 
60 ; member of " Long Nine," 61, 62 ; de- 
bate with Douglas and others, 1839, 62, 
63 ; meets and becomes engaged to Mary 
Todd, 63; engagement broken, 64; his 
deep melancholy, 64 ; letter to Stuart, 64 ; 



visit to Kentucky, 64 ; letters to Speed, 
64, 65; "Lost Townships" letters, 66; 
challenged by Shields, 66; prescribes 
terms of the duel, 67 ; duel prevented, 68 ; 
letter to Speed, 68 ; marriage to Mary 
Todd, November 4, 1842, 68, 69 ; children 
of, 69 ; partnership with Stuart dissolved, 
69, 70; law partnership with S. T. Logan, 
70 ; declines reelection to legislature, 70 ; 
letter to Speed, 71 ; letter to Martin Morris, 
71-73 ; letter to Speed, 73 ; presidential 
elector, 1844, 73 ; letters to B. F. James, 
74 ; elected to Congress, 1846, 75 ; service 
and speeches inCongress, 76-90 ; votes for 
Wilmot Proviso, 79 ; presidential elector in 
1840 and 1844, 80; favors General Tay- 
lor for President, 80-83 ! letters about 
Taylor's nomination, 80-82 ; letters to 
Herndon, 81-83; speeches for Taylor, 83; 
bill to prohibit slavery in District of Col- 
umbia, 86 ; letters recommending office- 
seekers, 87-89 ; letter to W. H. Herndon, 
00, 91 ; letter to Speed, 91, 92; letter to 
DuffGreen, 92 ; applies for commissioner- 
ship of General Land Office, 92 ; defends 
Butterfield against political attack, 92 ; re- 
fuses governorship of Oregon, 93; indig- 
nation at repeal of Missouri Compromise, 
94, 95 ; advocates reelection of Richard 
Yates to Congress, 96 ; speech at Illinois 
State Fair, 96; debate with Douglas at 
Peoria, 96-99 ; agreement with Douglas, 
99; candidate for United States Senate 
before Illinois legislature, 1855, 99; with- 
draws in favor of Trumbull, 100 ; letter to 
Robertson, 100, 101; speech at Bloom- 
ington convention, 1856, 103; vote for, 
for Vice-President, 1856, 104 ; presidential 
elector, 1856, 105; speeches in campaign 
of 1856, 105 ; speech at Republican 
banquet in Chicago, 106, 107; speech on 
Dred Scott case, 110-112; nominated for 
senator, 118, 119; "House divided 
against itself" speech, 119, 120, 127, 128; 
Lincoln-Douglas joint debate, 121-125; 
defeated for United States Senate, 125; 
analysis of causes which led to his defeat, 
126, 127; letters to H. Asbury and A. G. 
Henry, 127; letter to A. L. Pierce and 
others, 130, 131 ; speech in Chicago, 131, 
132 ; letter to M. W. Delahay, 132 ; let- 
ter to Colfax, 132, 133 ; letter to S. Gallo- 
way, 133; Ohio speeches, 133, 134; 
criticism of John Brown raid, 134, 135; 
speeches in Kansas, 136, 137 ; Cooper 
Institute speech, 137-140; speeches in 
New England, 140; letter to T. J. Pickett, 
145; candidate for presidential nomina- 
tion, i860, 145; letters to N. B. Judd, 
145, 146 ; nominated for President, i860, 
149-151 ; speech at Decatur convention, 
1 53> J 54 ! daily routine during campaign, 
158, 159; letters during campaign, 159; 
elected President, 160; his cabinet pro- 
gram, 161-163 ; letter to Seward offering 
cabinet appointment, 163; offers Bates 
and Cameron cabinet appointments, 163 ; 
summons Chase to Springfield, 163 ; with- 



INDEX 



569 



draws offer to Cameron, 163 ; editorial in 
Springfield "Journal," 164; offers cabi- 
net appointments to Gilmer, Hunt, and 
Scott, 164 ; letters to W. S. Speer and 
G. D. Prentiss, 164, 165; correspondence 
with Alexander H. Stephens, 165, 166; 
letter to Gilmer, 166 ; letter to Washburne, 
166, 167; writes his inaugural, 167, 168; 
journey to Washington, 168-174; fare- 
well address at Springfield, 169 ; speeches 
on journey to Washington, 169-171 ; con- 
sultation with Judd, 173; night journey 
to Washington, 173, 174; visits of cere- 
mony, 179, 180; first inauguration of, 
180-182; inaugural address, 180-182; calls 
council to consider question of Sumter, 
182, 183; signs order for relief of Sum- 
ter, 184 ; answer to Seward's memoran- 
dum of April i, 1861,187; instructions to 
Seward, 1865, 187; notice to Governor 
Pickens, 188 ; issues call for 75,000 volun- 
teers, 192 ; assumes responsibility for war 
measures, 195 ; opinion against dispersing 
Maryland legislature, 198, 199 ; author- 
izes Scott to suspend writ of habeas 
corpus, 199 ; action in Merryman case, 
200; institutes blockade, 205; calls for 
three years' volunteers, 206 ; appoints 
Charles Francis Adams minister to Eng- 
land, 2ii ; modifies Seward's despatch of 
May 21, 2r2; his immense duties, 212, 
213; calls council of war, 215; message 
to Congress, July 4, 1861, 218-220; post- 
pones decision about slaves, 222, 223; 
receives news of defeat at Bull Run, 229 ; 
letter to Hunter, 235 ; letter to Fremont, 
237, 238; letter to Browning, 238-240 ;sends 
Cameron to visit Fremont, 242 ; letter to 
General Curtis about Fremont, 242, 243 ; 
draft of despatch about Trent affair, 247, 
248; welcomes McClellan to Washington, 
250 ; orders retirement of General Scott, 
253; memorandum to McClellan, 253; 
his grasp of military problems, 255, 256 ; 
memorandum after battle of Bull Run, 
256; interest in East Tennessee, 256, 
257 ; personally urges on Congress the 
construction of railroad in East Tennessee, 
257,258; letterto Buell, 258,259; telegrams 
and letters to Buell and Halleck, 262-264, 
268, 269 ; places Halleck in command of 
Department of the Mississippi, 271 ; calls 
councils of war, 288, 289 ; General War Or- 
der No. 1, 290; Special War Order No. 1, 
291 ; letter to McClellan about plan of 
campaign, 291 ; interview with Stanton, 
293, 294 ; interview with McClellan, 295 ; 
President's General War Orders No. 2 
and No. 3, 295 ; receives news of fight 
between Monitor and Mtrrimac, 296; 
relieves McClellan from command of all 
troops except Army of the Potomac, 298 ; 
orders McDowell to protect Washington, 
299 ; letter to McClellan, 299, 300 ; letter 
to McClellan, 303, 304 ; visit to General 
Scott, 306 ; assigns General Pope to com- 
mand of Army of Virginia, 306; orders 
Bumside and Halleck to reinforce Mc- 



Clellan, 307 ; letter to governors of free 
States, 307, 308; accepts 300,000 new 
troops, 308; letters to McClellan, 308; 
visit to Harrison's Landing, 308 ; appoints 
Halleck general-in-chief, 309; his dis- 
passionate calmness in considering Mc- 
Clellan's conduct, 311; asks McClellan 
to use his influence with Pope's officers, 
313; places McClellan in command of 
defenses of Washington, 313; orders re- 
inforcements to McClellan, 316; tele- 
gram to McClellan, 316 ; visit to Antietam, 
3'6, 317; directions and letter to Mc- 
Clellan, 317-319; removes him from 
command, 319; letter to Bancroft, 321; 
reference to slavery in message to Con- 
gress, December 3, 1861, 321, 322 ; offers 
Delaware compensated abolishment, 322, 
323 ; special message of March 6, 1862, 
proposing joint resolution favoring grad- 
ual abolishment, 323, 324 ; letter to Mc- 
Dougall, 324 ; interview with delegations 
from border slave States, 324, 325 ; signs 
bill for compensated emancipation in Dis- 
trict of Columbia, 326; letter to Chase 
about Hunter's order of emancipation, 
327 ; proclamation revoking Hunter's 
order, 327, 328 ; second interview with 
border State delegations in Congress, 329- 
331 ; conversation with Carpenter about 
emancipation, 331, 332; reads draft of 
first emancipation proclamation to cabinet, 
331, 332; tells Seward and Welles of his 
purpose to issue emancipation proclama- 
tion, 332 ; letter to Reverdy Johnson, 
334; letter to Cuthbert Bullitt, 334, 335; 
letter to Horace Greeley, 335-337 ; inter- 
view with Chicago clergymen, 337-339 ; 
issues preliminary emancipation proclama- 
tion, 339-341 ; annual message of De- 
cember 1, 1862, 341, 342 ; issues final 
emancipation proclamation, January 1, 
1863, 342-346; letter to A. G. Hodges, 
346, 347 ; letters about arming negroes, 
350; speech about Fort Pillow massacre, 
35 1 . 35 2 ! interview with Frederick Doug- 
lass, 352 ; letter to Governor Seymour, 
356; action in case of Vallandigham, 358, 
359 ; suspends privilege of writ of habeas 
corpus, 360; attitude toward Knights 
of the Golden Circle, 361 ; appoints Burn- 
side to command Army of the Potomac, 
363 ; telegram to Burnside, and letter to 
Halleck about Burnside, 365 ; letter to 
Burnside, 366 ; relieves Burnside and ap- 
points Hooker to succeed him, 366 ; letter 
to Hooker, 366-368; criticism on Hooker's 
plan of campaign, 368 ; continued belief 
in Hooker, 370 ; instructions to Hooker, 
37°> 37 1 ! telegrams to Hooker, 371 ; ap- 
points Meade to command Army of the 
Potomac, 372 ; urges Meade to active pur- 
suit of Lee, 375 ; letter to Meade, 375, 
376 ; Gettysburg address, 376, 377 ; letter 
to Grant, 384, 385 ; orders Rosecrans to 
advance, 385, 386; note to Halleck, 388; 
telegram to Rosecrans, 388 ; orders re- 
inforcements to Rosecrans, 388 ; signs 



57© 



INDEX 



bill making Grant lieutenant-general, 
393 ; address on presenting his commis- 
sion, 393, 394 ; letter to Grant, 396 ; under 
fire, 403; letter to Sherman, 412, 413; 
appoints military governors for Ten- 
nessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and North 
Carolina, 419 ; his theory of " reconstruc- 
tion," 419 ; message to Congress, July 4, 
1861, 419; letter to Cuthbert Bullitt, 420, 
421 ; circular letter to military governors, 
421, 422 ; letter to Governor Shepley, 422 ; 
letter to General Banks, 423; references 
to reconstruction in message to Congress, 
December 8, 1863, 424 ; amnesty procla- 
mation, December 8, 1863, 424 ; letter to 
General Banks, 424, 425 ; letters to Gen- 
eral Steele, 427, 428 ; letters to Johnson, 
428, 429 ; letter to Drake and others, 
430-432 ; revokes Fremont's proclama- 
tion freeing slaves, 432 ; letter to General 
Schofield, 433 ; directs Stanton to issue 
order regulating raising of colored troops, 
434. 435! letter to H. W. Hoffman, 435, 
436; Democratsand Fremont Republicans 
criticize his action on slavery, 437, 438 ; 
relations with his cabinet, 438, 439 ; atti- 
tude toward Chase, 439-441, 444 ; letter 
to Chase, 441 ; letter to F. A. Cunkling 
and others, 443; sentiment in favor of his 
reelection, 443, 444; letter to Washburne 
about second term, 444 ; letters to Gen- 
eral Schurz, 444, 445 ; instructions tooffice- 
holders, 445; speeches during campaign, 
445 ; renominated for President, 447, 44S; 
refuses to intimate his preference for Vice- 
President, 448, 449 ; indorsement on 
Nicolay's letter, 448, 449; reply to com- 
mittee of notification, 450 ; letter accept- 
ing nomination, 450, 451 ; his attitude 
toward the French in Mexico, 451, 452; 
opposition to, in Congress, 454 ; on 
Davis's reconstruction bill, 454-456; 
proclamation of July 8, 1864, 456; ac- 
cepts Chase's resignation, 457 ; nominates 
David Tod to succeed him, 457 ; substi- 
tutes name of W. P. Fessenden, 457, 
458 ; correspondence with Greeley, 458- 
460; criticized because of Niagara con- 
ference, 460, 461 ; draft of letter to C. D. 
Robinson, 461 ; indorsement on Jaquess's 
application to go South, 462 ; answer to 
Raymond's proposition, 463 ; interview 
with John T. Mills, 464, 465 ; memoran- 
dum, August 23, 1864, 466; speech on 
morning after election, 469, 470; popular 
and electoral votes for, 470; summing up 
of results of the election, 470 ; suggests 
key-note of Morgan's opening speech be- 
fore Baltimore convention, 471 ; message 
to Congress, December 6, 1864, 471, 472, 
476-478; answer to serenade, 474, 475; 
opinion on ratification of Thirteenth 
Amendment, 475; two constitutional 
amendments offered to the people during 
his administration, 476; gives Blair per- 
mission to go South, 478; letter to Blair 
in reply to Jefferson Davis, 481 ; sends 
Major Eckert to meet peace commission- 



ers, 482 ; instructions to Seward, 483 ; 
instructions to Grant, 483 ; goes to Fortress 
Monroe, 484 ; conference with peace 
commissioners, 484, 485 ; pressure upon 
him to dismiss Montgomery Blair, 487, 
489 ; personal regard Tor the Blairs, 488 ; 
letter to Stanton, 488 ; lecture to cabinet, 
489; requests resignation of Blair, 489; 
nominates Chase for chief justice, 490, 491 ; 
opinion of Chase, 490, 491 ; offers attor- 
ney-generalship to Holt and Speed, 491 ; 
offers cabinet appointment to Governor 
Morgan, 492 ; appoints Hugh McCulloch 
Secretary of the Treasury, 492; indorse- 
mentsonUsher's resignation, 402; his plans 
for the future, 492, 493 ; submits to cabi- 
net draft of joint resolution offering the 
South $400,000,000, 493; his second in- 
auguration, 493-496 ; the second inaugu- 
ral, 494-496 ; letter to Weed, 497 ; his 
literary rank, 497 ; last public address, 
498; despatch to Grant, March 3, 1865, 
503, 504 ; at City Point, 506 ; telegraphs 
Grant, " Let the thing be pressed," 511 ; 
visit to Richmond, 517, 518 ; interviews 
with John A. Campbell, 519; gives per- 
mission for meeting of Virginia legislature, 
519; regret of army for, 529; return to 
Washington, 530 ; last cabinet meeting, 
S3i, 532; 14th of April, 532, 533, 
536-540; danger from assassination, 533, 
534 ; interest in the theater, 536 ; attends 
Ford's Theater, 536, 537 ; death of, 538- 
540 ; his death prevents organized re- 
joicing at downfall of rebellion, 544 ; 
mourning for, 544-548 ; feeling of radi- 
cals at death of, 545 ; funeral ceremonies 
of, in Washington, 545, 546; funeral 
journey to Springfield, Illinois, 546, 547; 
burial at Springfield, 547, 548; his char- 
acter and career, 549-555; his place in 
history, 555 
Lincoln, Abraham, grandfather of the 
President, emigrates from Virginia to Ken- 
tucky, 3, 4 ; killed by Indians, 4 
Lincoln, Edward Baker, son of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, birth of, 69 ; death of, 69 
Lincoln, Isaac, settles on Holston River, 5 
Lincoln, Josiah, uncle of the President, 
goes to fort for assistance against In- 
dians, 4 
Lincoln, Mary, aunt of the President, 4 
Lincoln, Mary Todd, wife of the Presi- 
dent, engagement to Lincoln, 63, 64 ; 
writes "Lost Townships" letters, 66; 
marriage to Lincoln, November 4, 1842, 68, 
69 ; children of, 69 ; death of, 69 ; accom- 
panies Mr. Lincoln to Washington, 
168 ; drive with her husband, April, 14, 
1865, 532; invites friends to attend Ford's 
Theater, 536 ; attends theater with her 
husband, 538 ; at Lincoln's death-bed, 539 
Lincoln, Mordecai, uncle of the Presi- 
dent, defends homestead against Indians, 
4 ; inherits his father's lands, 4 
Lincoln, Nancy, aunt of the President, 4 
Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, mother of the 
President, marries Thomas Lincoln, June 



INDEX 



57i 



19, 1806, J ; teaches her husband to sign 
his name, 5 ; birth of daughter, 5 ; birth 
of Abraham, son of, 6; death of, 9 
Lincoln, Robert Todd, son of the Presi- 
dent, Secretary of War, minister to Eng- 
land, birth of, 69; public services, 69; 
accompanies Mr. Lincoln to Washington, 
168; on Grant's staff, 517; with his fa- 
ther, April 14, 1865, 532; at Lincoln's 
death-bed, 540 . 

Lincoln, Samuel, ancestor of the Presi- 
dent, emigrates to America, 3 
Lincoln, Sarah, sister of the President, 

bom, 5 ; goes to school, 6 
Lincoln, Sarah Bush Johnston. See 

Johnston, Sarah Bush 
Lincoln, Thomas, father of the President, 
3 ; narrowly escapes capture by Indians, 
4 ; learns carpenter's trade, 5 ; marries 
Nancy Hanks, June 12, 1806, 5 ; daugh- 
ter of, bom, 5 ; removes to Rock Spring 
Farm, 5, 6 ; Abraham, son of, bom, 6; buys 
farm on Knob Creek, 6; emigrates to 
Indiana, 7, 8; death of his wife, 9; mar- 
ries Sally Bush Johnston, 10; emigrates 
to Illinois, 20 
Lincoln, Thomas, son of President Lin- 
coln, birth of, 69; death of, 69; accom- 
panies Mr. Lincoln to Washington, 168 
Lincoln, William Wallace, son of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, birth of, 69; death of, 60, 
293 ; accompanies Mr. Lincoln to Wash- 
ington, 168 
Lloyd, John M., keeps tavern at Sur- 

rattsville, Maryland, 536 
Logan, Stephen T., at Springfield, Illi- 
nois, 52: law partnership with Lincoln, 
70; defeated for Congress, qi 
" Long Nine," a power in Illinois legisla- 
ture, 61 
Longstreet, James, Confederate lieu- 
tenant-general, besieges Burnside atKnox- 
ville, 391; retreats toward Virginia, 391; 
reports conversation with Ord, 503 ; in 
final defense of Richmond, 509 
Louisiana, State of, military governor ap- 
pointed for, 419; election for members of 
Congress, 422 ; contest over slavery clause 
in new constitution, 422, 423 ; election of 
State officers in, 425, 426; adopts new 
constitution abolishing slavery, 426 ; sla- 
very in, throttled by public opinion, 473 ; 
ratifies Thirteenth Amendment, 475 
Lovejoy, Elijah P., murder of, 46 
Lovell, Mansfield, Confederate major- 
general, evacuates New Orleans, 285; 
sends men and guns to Vicksburg, 286 
Lyon, Nathaniel, brigadier-general 
United States Volunteers, service in Mis- 
souri, 202-204 ; killed at Wilson's Creek, 

Lyons, ^Richard Bickerton Pemell, 
barnn, afterward earl, British minister at 
Washington, instructed to demand apol- 
ogy for Trent affair, 246 

McClellan, George B., major-general, 
general-in-chief, United States army, 



orders concerning slaves, 221 ; commis- 
sioned by Governor Dennison, 224 ; his 
previous career, 224 ; quick promotion of, 
224 ; successes in western Virginia, 224, 
225; ordered to Washington, 229; his 
ambition, 249-251 ; organizes Army of the 
Potomac, 250, 251 ; his hallucinations, 
251, 252; quarrel with General Scott, 251, 
252 ; expresses contempt for the Presi- 
dent, 252 ; answer to President's inquiry, 
253 ; illness of, 253 ; instructions to Buell, 
258-260; unwilling to promote Halleck, 
270; attends council of war, 289; ex- 
plains plan of campaign to Stanton, 290; 
letter to Stanton, 292 ; revokes Hooker's 
authority to cross lower Potomac, 294 ; 
council of his officers votes in favor of 
water route, 295 ; at gathering of officials 
to discuss news of fight between Monitor 
and Merrimac, 296 ; occupies abandoned 
rebel position, 297 ; calls council of corps 
commanders, 298 ; relieved from command 
of all troops save Army of the Potomac, 
298; arrives at Fortress Monroe, 299; 
siege of Yorktown, 301 ; his incapacity 
and hallucination, 302-304; retreat to 
James River, 302; letter to Stanton, 303; 
protests against withdrawal of Army of 
the Potomac, 309 ; reaches Alexandria, 
311; suggests leaving Pope to his fate, 
311 ; telegram to Pope's officers, 313 ; in 
command of defenses of Washington, 313 ; 
follows Lee into Maryland, 314; learns 
Lee's plans, 315; battleof Antietam, 315 ; 
forces under his command, 317, 318; re- 
moved from command, 319 ; mentioned, 
328, 329 ; adopted by Democrats for presi- 
dential candidate, 355, 43 8 *» nominated 
for President, 467 ; letter of acceptance, 
468 ; electoral votes for, 470 ; resigns from 
the army, 470 
McClernand, John A., member of Con- 
gress, major-general United States Vol- 
unteers, at Springfield, Illinois, 52 
McCulloch, Ben, Confederate brigadier- 
general, defeat at Pea Ridge, 271 
McCulloch, Hugh, Secretary of the 

Treasury, enters Lincoln's cabinet, 492 
McDougall, James A., member of Con- 
gress, United Stades senator, at Spring- 
field, Illinois, 52 
McDowell, Irvin, brevet major-general 
United States army, fears junction 01 
Johnston and Beauregard, 216; advances 
against Beauregard, 226; battle of Bull 
Run, July 21, 1861, 226-229; advises 
movement on Manassas, 289; ordered by 
Lincoln to protect Washington, 299, 305 ; 
ordered to form junction with Shields and 
Fremont, 306; in Army of Virginia, 310 
McLean, John, justice United States 
Supreme Court, vote for, in Chicago con- 
vention, 149 
McNamar, John, engaged to Anne Rut- 

Magbffin, Beriah, governor of Kentucky, 

efforts in behalf of secession, 201 
Magruder, John B., brevet lieutenant- 



572 



INDEX 



colonel United States army, Confederate 
major-general, joins the Confederacy, 196; 
opposes McClellan with inferior numbers, 
301 
Maine, State of, admitted as State, 1820, 

Mallory, S. R., United States senator, 
Confederate Secretary of the Navy, writes 
proposition of armistice dictated by Davis 
and signed by Johnston, 521 

Malvern Hill, Virginia, battle of, July 1, 
1862, 302 

Marcy, R. B., brevet major-general United 
States army, McClellan's chief of staff, 
294 

Marshall, Charles, Confederate colonel, 
present at Lee's surrender, 513 

Maryland, State of, secession feeling in, 
193 ; arrest and dispersion of its legisla- 
ture, 199; refuses offer of compensated 
abolishment, 434; emancipation party in, 
434; abolishes slavery, 435, 436; slavery 
in, throtded by public opinion, 473; rati- 
fies Thirteenth Amendment, 474 

Mason, James M., United States senator, 
Confederate commissioner to Europe, in- 
terview with John Brown, 134; goes to 
Baltimore, 197 ; capture of, 246-249 

Matthews, J., burns Booth's letter, 537 

Maximilian (Ferdinand Maximilian 
Joseph), Archduke of Austria and Em- 
peror of Mexico, established by Napo- 



leon III 



texico, 451 



Maynard, Horace, member of Congress, 
minister to Turkey, telegram about East 
Tennessee, 259; elected to Congress, 
419 

Meade, George G., major-general United 
States army, succeeds Hooker in com- 
mand of Army of the Potomac, 372; 
battle of Gettysburg, 372-374 ; pur- 
suit of Lee, 375, 377 ; offers to give up 
command of Army of the Potomac, 394 ; 
continued in command, 395; reports sur- 
render of Richmond, 510 ; ordered to pur- 
sue Lee, 510; pursuit of Lee, 511 ; or- 
dered to disregard Sherman's truce, 523 

Meigs, Montgomery C, brevet major- 
general and quartermaster-general United 
States army, at gathering of officials to 
discuss news of battle between Monitor 
and Merrimac, 296 

Memphis, Tennessee, river battle at, 286 

Merrimac, the, Confederate ironclad, bat- 
tle with Monitor, 278-2S2 

Merryman, John, arrest of, 199 

Minnesota, the, Union steam frigate, in 
fight between Monitor and Merrimac, 
280 

Missouri, State of, admitted as State, 1821, 
19; action concerning secession, 201-204; 
provisional State government established, 
418; struggle over slavery, 430-434; 
adopts ordinance of emancipation, 434; 
resolution in Assembly favoring Lincoln's 
renomination, 444; votes for Grant in 
Baltimore convention, 447 ; slavery in, 
throttled by public opinion, 473 



Missouri Compromise, repeal of, 94, 95, 

Mobile Bay, Alabama, battle of, August 
5, 1S64, 468, 525 _ 

Monitor, the, Union ironclad, battle with 
Merrimac, 279-282 

Montgomery, Alabama, capital of Con- 
federacy removed from, to Richmond, 
207 

Moore, Thomas O., governor of Louisi- 
ana, arms free colored men, 348, 349 

Morgan, Edwin D., governor of New 
York, United States senator, opens Re- 
publican national convention, 1864, 446 ; 
declines cabinet appointment, 492 

Morris, Achilles, elected to Illinois Iegis- 
ture in 1832, 34 

Morrison, James L. D., desires commis- 
sionership of General Land Office, 92 

Mudd, Samuel, assists Booth and Herold, 
542; imprisoned, 544 

Mulligan, James A., brevet brigadier- 
general United States Volunteers, cap- 
tured by Price, 241 

Murfreesboro, Tennessee, battle of, De- 
cember 31, 1862, to January 3, 1863, 380 

Napoleon III colonial ambitions of, 211; 
establishes Maximilian in Mexico, 451 

Nashville, Tennessee, battle of, Decem- 
cember 15, 16, T864, 410 

Neale, T. M., commands troops in Black 
Hawk War, 31, 32; defeated for Illinois 
legislature 1832, 34 

Negro soldiers, experiments with, early 
in the war, 348 ; governor of Louisiana 
arms free blacks, 348, 349; reference to, 
in emancipation proclamation, 349, 350; 
Lincoln's interest in, 350 ; attitude of Con- 
federates toward, 350, 351 ; massacre of, 
at Fort Pillow, 35T ; President's conver- 
sation with Frederick Douglass about re- 
taliation, 352 ; Stanton's order regulating 
raising of, 435 ; Republican national 
platform claims protection of laws of war 
for, 446 ; take part in second inauguration 
of Lincoln, 493, 494 ; Jefferson Davis's 
recommendation concerning slaves in 
rebel army, 501 ; assist in restoring order 
in Richmond, 517; in Lincoln's funeral 
procession, 546. See Slavery and 
Emancipation 

Nelson, William, lieutenant-commander 
United States navy, major-general United 
States Volunteers, occupies Nashville, 270 

New Orleans, Louisiana, capture of, 283- 
285 ; Confederate negro regiment in, 348, 
349; Union sentiment in, 420 

New Salem, Illinois, town of, 22-26 

New York City, draft riots in, 356, 357; 
funeral honors to Lincoln in, 546, 547 

Nicolay, John G., Lincoln's private sec- 
retary, 158; accompanies Mr. Lincoln to 
Washington, 168; in attendance at Balti- 
more convention, 448, 449 ; letter to Hay, 
448 

North Carolina, State of, joins Confed- 
eracy, 200, 204 ; military governor ap- 
pointed for, 419 



INDEX 



573 



Offutt, Denton, engages Lincoln to take 
flatboat to New Orleans, 21 ; disappears 
from New Salem, 35 

O'Laughlin, Michael, in conspiracy to 
assassinate Lincoln, 534 ; imprisoned, 544 

Ord, Edward O. C., brevet major-gen- 
eral United States army, conversation 
with Longstreet, 503 

Owens, Mary S., Lincoln's attentions to, 
correspondence with and proposal o! 
marriage to, 55-60 

Palfrey, F. W., Confederate brigadier- 
general, statement about strength of Army 
of the Potomac, 315 

Parke, John G., brevet major-general 
United States army, in recapture of Fort 
Stedman, 505, 506; in assault at Peters- 
burg, 509 

Patterson, Robert, major-general Penn- 
sylvania militia, turns troops toward 
Harper's Ferry, 209 ; part in campaign 
against Manassas, 216; orders concern- 
ing slaves, 220, 221 ; failure at Harper's 
Ferry, 228 

Paulding, Hiram, rear-admiral United 
States navy, burns Norfolk navy-yard, 
278 

Pea Ridge, Arkansas battle of, 271 

Pemberton, John C, Confederate lieu- 
tenant-general, surrenders Vicksburg, 383 

Pendleton, George H., member of Con- 
gress, minister to Prussia, nominated for 
Vice-President, 467 

Pendleton, William N., Confederate 
brigadier-general, advises Lee to sur- 
render, 512 

Perryville, Kentucky, battle of, October 
8, 1862, 379 

Peter, Z., defeated for Illinois legislature, 
1832, 34 

Petersburg, Virginia, operations against, 
400-402, 507-510; evacuation of, April 2, 
1865, 510 

Phelps, John S., member of Congress, 
appointed military governor of Arkansas, 

Phelps, J. W., brigadier-general United 
Stales Volunteers, mentioned in letter of 
Lincoln, 334 ; declared an outlaw by 
Confederate War Department, 350 

Philippi, West Virginia, battle of, June 3, 
1861, 214, 225 

Phillips, Wendell, letter to Cleveland 
convention, 442 

Pickens, Francis W., member of Con- 
gress, minister to Russia, governor of 
South Carolina, fires on StaroftliL- \V,-st, 
178 

Pickett, George E., Confederate major- 
general, in battle of Five Forks, 507, 508 

Pierce, Franklin, fourteenth President of 
the United States, recognizes bogus laws 
in Kansas, 113; appoints governors for 
Kjns.is, 113, 114 

Pillow, Gideon J., Confederate major- 
general, stationed at Columbus, 254; es- 
capes from Fort Donelson, 268 



Pinkerton, Allen, detective work of, 173 

Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, battle 
of, April 6, 7, 1S62, 272-274 

Polk, James K., eleventh President of 
the United States, sends treaty of peace 
with Mexico to Senate, 79 

Pomeroy, Samuel C, United Slates 
senator, secret circular of, 440 

Pope, John, brevet major-general United 
States army, sent to New Madrid, 270; 
capture of Island No. 10, 274 ; proceeds 
to Fort Pillow, 274 ; joins Halleck, 274 ; 
assigned to command Army of Virginia, 
306 ; assumes command of Army of Vir- 
ginia, 310; second battle of Bull Run, 
310, 311 ; despatch announcing his defeat, 
312; relieved from command of Army of 
the Potomac, 314 

Porter, David D, admiral United States 
navy, commands mortar flotilla in expe- 
dition with Farragut, 282-287 ; in second 
expedition to Vicksburg, 287 ; in opera- 
tions about Vicksburg, 382, 383 ; visits 
Richmond with Lincoln, 517, 518 

Porterfield, G. A., Confederate colonel, 
routed at Philippi, 225 

Port Hudson, Louisiana, siege and sur- 
render of, 383, 384 

Port Royal, South Carolina, expedition 
against, 245, 246 

Powell, Lewis, alias Lewis Payne, in 
conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, 534 ; 
assigned to murder Seward, 535 ; attack 
upon Seward, 540, 541 ; escape and cap- 
ture of, 541, 542; execution of, 544 

Price, Sterling, Confederate major-gen- 
eral, retreat to Springfield, Missouri, 234 ; 
captures Mulligan, 241 ; retreats toward 
Arkansas, 269; defeat at Pea Ridge, 271 

Pritchard, Benjamin D., brevet briga- 
dier-general United States Volunteers, 
captures Jefferson Davis, 526 

Quinton, R., defeated for Illinois legisla- 
ture, 1832, 34 

Rathbone, Henry R., brevet colonel 
United States army, attends Ford's The- 
ater with Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, 
536; wounded by Booth, 538, 539 

Raymond, Henry J., member of Con- 
gress, letter to Lincoln, 462, 463 ; visits 
Washington, 463 

Reconstruction, in West Virginia and 
Missouri, 418, 419; Lincoln's theory of, 
419; in Louisiana, 420-426; in Arkansas, 
426, 427; in Tennessee, 428, 420; oppo- 
sition in Congress to Lincoln s action 
concerning, 454 ; Henry Winter Davis's 
bill prescribing method of, 454 ; Lincoln's 
proclamation of, July 8, 1864,456; Wade- 
Davis manifesto, 456, 457 

Republican Party, formation of, 102, 103 ; 
nominates Fremont and Dayton, 1856, 
103, 104 ; national convention of, i860, 
144-151 ; candidates in i860, 152; cam- 
paign of, i860, 153-160; Fremont faction 
denounces Lincoln.' s attitude on slavery. 



574 



INDEX 



438 ; the Chase faction, 439-44 1 '> national 
convention of, 1864, 446-449 ; gloomy 
prospects of, 462-466 ; success in elec- 
tions of, 1864, 469, 470 

Retaliation, rebel threats of, 350, 351 ; 
cabinet action on Fort Pillow massacre, 
352 ; conversation between Lincoln and 
Frederick Douglass about, 352 

Reynolds, John, governor of Illinois, 
issues call for volunteers for Black Hawk 
War, 31, 32 

Richmond, Virginia, becomes capital of 
Confederate States, 207 ; panic in, at ru- 
mors of evacuation, 481 ; high prices in, 
481 ; excitement created by Blair's visits, 
481, 482 ; alarm at Grant's advance, 500; 
surrender of, April 3, 1865, 510; burning ' 
of, 515, 516 

Rich Mountain, Virginia, battle of, July 
n, 1861, 225 

Riney, Zachariah, teacher of President 
Lincoln, 6 

Roanoke, the, Union steam frigate, in 
fight between Monitor and Merrimac, 
280 

Robinson, E., defeated for Illinois legisla- 
ture, 1832, 34 

Rodgers, John, rear-admiral United 
States navy, takes part in Port Royal 
expedition, 245, 246 

Romine, Gideon, merchant at Gentry- 
ville, 9 

Rosecrans, William S., brevet major- 
general United States army, success at 
Rich Mountain, 225 ; succeeds Buell in 
Kentucky, 380; battle of Murfreesboro, 
380; Iuka and Corinth, 380; drives Bragg 
to Chattanooga, 385 ; Chattanooga and 
Chickamauga, 386-388; relieved from 
command, 388, 389 ; dilatory movements 
delay reconstruction in Tennessee, 428 

Russell, Lord John, British minister for 
foreign affairs, interview with Charles 
Francis Adams, 211 

Rutledge, Anne, engagement to Lincoln, 
54 ; death of, 54 

Savannah, Georgia, occupied by Sherman, 
December 21, 1864, 412 

Schofield, J. M., brevet major-general, 
general-in-chief, United States army, 
ordered to join Sherman, 414 ; joins Sher- 
man, 417 

Schurz, Carl, major-general United States 
Volunteers, United States senator, Secre- 
tary of the Interior, asks permission to 
take part in presidental campaign, 444 

Scott, Dred, case of, 108, 109 

Scott, Robert E., tendered cabinet ap- 
pointment, 164 

Scott, Winfield, lieutenant-general United 
States army, warning to Lincoln about 
plot in Baltimore, 172; charged with 
safety of Washington, 172; attempt to 
reinforce Anderson, 178: advises evacu- 
ation of Sumter, 183; orders Washington 
prepared for a siege, 194 ; report to Presi- 
dent Lincoln, 194, 195; offers Lee com- 



mand of seventy-five regiments, 196; 
orders Lyon to St. Louis, 202 ; loyalty of, 
208; occupies Cairo, Illinois, 210: mili- 
tary problem before, 210; plan of cam- 
paign, 215, 216, 231, 232; refuses to 
credit news of defeat at Bull Run, 228, 
229 ;' welcomes McClellan to Washington, 
250; quarrel with McClellan, 251, 252; 
retirement of, 251-253; rank as lieutenant- 
general, 393 ; attends Lincoln's funeral in 
New York, 547 

Seaton, William W., mayor of Wash- 
ington, approves Lincoln's bill abolishing 
slavery in District of Columbia, 87 

Secession, South Carolina, Florida, Mis- 
sissippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, 
and Texas join the movement, 175, 176; 
action of central cabal, 177; sentiment in 
Maryland, 193, 194; Virginia passes ordi- 
nance of, 194 ; Tennessee, North Caro- 
lina, and Arkansas join the movement, 
200; sentiment in Delaware, 201; in 
Kentucky, 201; in Missouri, 201-204: 
numerical strength of, 204. See Confed- 
erate States of A merica 

Seddon, James A., member of Congress, 
Confederate Secretary of War, resigna- 
tion of, 501 

Sedgwick, John, major-general United 
States Volunteers, crosses Rappahannock 
and takes Fredericksburg, 368, 369 

Seven Days' Battles, 302, 306, 307 

Seward, Augustus H., brevet colonel 
United States army, stabbed by Powell, 
alias Payne, 541 

Seward, Frederick W., Assistant Secre- 
tary of State, visits Lincoln in Philadel- 
phia, 172; wounded by Powell, alias 
Payne, 540, 541 

Seward, William H., United States sena- 
tor, Secretary of State, desires reelection 
of Douglas to United States Senate, 125; 
candidate for presidential nomination, 
i860, 144 ; votes for, in Chicago conven- 
tion, 149-151; accepts cabinet appoint- 
ment, 163 ; transmits offers of cabinet 
appointments, 164; suggestions to Lin- 
coln about journey to Washington, 168; 
warning to Lincoln about plot in Balti- 
more, 172, 173; meets Lincoln at railway 
station in Washington, 174; appointed 
Secretary of State, 182; reply to Confed- 
erate commissioners, 183; reply to Judge 
Campbell, 183; memorandum of April 1, 
1861, 184-187; opinion of Lincoln, 187; 
despatch of May 21, 211; friendship for 
Lord Lyons, 247 ; despatch in Trent affair, 
249 ; at gathering of officials to discuss 
news of Monitor and Merrimac, 296; 
goes to New York with President's letter, 
307; Lincoln tells him of coming emanci- 
pation proclamation, 332 ; suggests post- 
ponement of emancipation proclamation, 
332 ; attitude toward the French in Mexico, 
451, 452 ; agrees with President against 
making proffers of peace to Davis, 463 ; 
proclaims ratification ofThirteenth Amend- 
ment, 475 ; goes to Hampton Roads. 483 ; 



INDEX 



575 



relations with Montgomery Blair, 488 ; 
plot to murder, 535 ; attacked by Powell, 
alias Payne, 540, 541 

Seymour, Horatio, governor of New 
York, opposition to the draft, 355-357 ; 
correspondence with Lincoln, 356 ; noti- 
fies McClellan of his nomination, 468 

Shepley, G. F., brigadier-general United 
States Volunteers, military governor of 
Louisiana, orders election lor members of 
Congress, 422 ; orders registration of 
loyal voters, 422, 423 

Sheridan, Philip H., lieutenant-general, 
general-in-chief, United States army, 
operations in Shenandoah valley, 403, 
404; succeeds McClellan, 470; in Shen- 
andoah valley, 502 ; reaches City Point, 
506 ; advance to Five Forks, 507 ; reports 
situation to Grant, 507 ; battle of Five 
Forks, 508 ; ordered to get on Lee's line 
of retreat, 509, 510; despatch to Grant, 
511; captures Appomattox Station, 512; 
despatch to Grant, 512 

Sherman, John, member of Congress, 
Secretary of the Treasury, United States 
senator, candidate for Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, 141 

Sherman, William Tecumseh, lieuten- 
ant-general, general -in-chief United States 
army.sentto Nashville, 254 ; succeeds An- 
derson, 254 ; interview with Cameron,255; 
asks to be relieved, 255 ; in operations 
about Vicksburg, 38r. 382 ; reaches Chat- 
tanooga, 389 ; in battle of Chattanooga, 
390, 391; conference with Grant, 395; 
master in the West, 395 ; Meridian cam- 
paign, 405, 406 ; concentrates troops at 
Chattanooga, 406 ; march on Atlanta, 
408, 468 ; truce with Hood, 408 ; divides 
his army, 409 ; march to the sea, 410- 
412; telegram to President Lincoln, 412;. 
proposes to march through the Carolinas, 
414; from Savannah to Goldsboro, 414- 
417; visit to Grant, 417; march north- 
ward, 502 ; visit to Lincoln and Grant, 
506 ; admiration for Grant and respect 
for Lee, 520; enters Raleigh, 521; re- 
ceives communication from Johnston, 
521; meetings with Johnston, 521, 522; 
agreement between them, 522 ; agree- 
ment disapproved at Washington, 523 ; 
report to Grant, 523, 524 ; receives John- 
ston's surrender, 524 ; effect of his march 
through the South, 524 ; sent against E. 
Kirby Smith, 526; soldiers of, in grand 
review, 528 

Shields, James, United States senator, 
brigadier-genera] United States Volun- 
teers, at Springfield, Illinois, 52; auditor 
of Illinois, 65; challenges Lincoln to a 
duel, 66-68 ; ordered to form junction 
with McDowell and Fremont, 306 

Short, James, buys Lincoln's surveying 
instruments and restores them to him, 36 

Simpson, M., Bishop of the Methodist 
Church, oration at Lincoln's funeral, 548 

Slavery, agitation in Illinois, 45, 46; Lin- 
coln-Stone protest, 47 ; Lincoln's bill to 



abolish, in District of Columbia, 85-87 ; 
repeal of Missouri Compromise, 94, 95 ; 
Peoria debate of LincoLn and Douglas, 
96-98 ; Lincoln's Chicago banquet speech, 
106, 107; Dred Scott case, 108-112 ; pro- 
slavery reaction, 113; slavery agitation 
in Kansas, 113-117; Lincoln's "House 
divided against itself" speech, 119, 120, 
127, 128 ; Lincoln-Douglas joint debate, 
r2i-i25; John Brown raid, 134, 135; 
Lincoln's speeches in Kansas and the 
East, 136-140; pro-slavery demands of 
Democratic leaders, 141, 142; attitude of 
political parties upon, in 1860, 152, 153; 
" corner-stone " theory of the Confederate 
States, 179; dream of the conspirators, 
197, 204 ; dread of slave insurrections in 
the South, 220, 221 ; action of Union 
commanders about, 220-223 ; Fremont's 
vVashl mat ' orl > 236-238 ; Lincoln to Brown- 
ing about Fremont's proclamation, 238- 
240; President's interview with border 
State delegations, 257, 258, 324, 325 ; refer- 
ences to, in Cameron's report, 320; in 
Lincoln's message of December 3, 1861, 
321, 322 ; Delaware offered compensated 
abolishment, 322, 323; Lincoln's special 
message to Congress, March 6, 1862, 323, 
324; President's letter to McDougall, 324; 
Congress passes bill for compensated 
emancipation in District of Columbia, 
325, 326; bill in Congress to aid emanci- 
pation in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 
326; Lincoln revokes Hunter's order, 
327, 328 ; measures relating to, in Con- 
gress, 1862, 329 ; President's second in- 
terview with border State delegations, 
329-331 ; Lincoln reads first draft of 
emancipation proclamation to cabinet, 
33 J > 33 2 ! President's interview with 
Chicago clergymen, 337-339; President 
issues preliminary emancipation procla- 
mation, 339-341 ; annual message of De- 
cember 1, 1862, on, 34T, 342; President 
issues final emancipation proclamation, 
342-346 ; President's views on, 346, 347 ; 
arming of negro soldiers, 348-350; in- 
structions from War Department about 
slaves, 349; contest over slavery clause in 
new Louisiana constitution, 423 ; slavery 
abolished in Louisiana, 426 ; abolished in 
Arkansas, 427; abolished in Tennessee, 
429 ; abolished in Missouri, 434 ; abol- 
ished in Maryland, 435, 436 ; attitude of 
Democratic party on, 437, 438; Republi- 
can national platform favors constitutional 
amendment abolishing, 446 ; fugitive- 
slave law repealed, 457; constitutional 
amendment prohibiting, in United States, 
471-476; public opinion on, in certain 
States, 473; two constitutional amend- 
ments offered during Lincoln's term, 475, 
476 ; Lincoln's draft of joint resolution 
offering South $400,000,000, 493; decline 
in value of slave property in the South, 
5or; effect on Lincoln's character, 551. 
See Emancipation and Negro soldiers 



576 



INDEX 



Slidell, John, minister to Mexico, United 
States senator, Confederate commissioner 
to Europe, capture of, 246-249; last in- 
structions from Confederate Secretary di 
State to, 501, 502 

Smith, Caleb B., member of Congress, 
Secretary of the Interior, judge United 
States District Court, appointed Secretary 
of the Interior, 182 ; signs cabinet protest, 
311, 312 

Smith, E. Kirby, Confederate general, 
commands forces west ot the Mississippi, 
525 ; surrender of, 526, 527 

Smith, Melancton, rear-admiral United 
States navy, at gathering of officials to 
discuss fight between Monitor and Mer- 
ritnac, 296 

Smith, William F., brevet major-general 
United States army, service at Chatta- 
nooga, 389 x \ . , 

Spain, joint expedition to Mexico, 451 

Spangler, Edward, imprisoned for com- 
plicity in Booth's plot, 544 

Speed, James, Attorney-General, ap- 
pointed Attorney-General, 491 

Speed, Joshua F., intimacy with Lincoln, 
53 ; Lincoln's letters to, 64, 65, 68 ; mar- 
riage, 65 

Spottsylvania, Virginia, battle of, May 8- 
19, 1864, 398» 399 

Springfield, Illinois, its ambition, 26; 
first newspaper, 26 ; becomes capital of 
Illinois, 45, 52 ; in 1837-39,53; revival 
of business in, 61 ; society in, 62 ; Lin- 
coln's speech of farewell at, 169; funeral 
honors to Lincoln in, 547, 548 

Stanley, Edward, member of Congress, 
appointed militarygovernorof North Caro- 
lina, 420 

Stanton, Edwin M., Attorney-General, 
Secretary of War, succeeds Cameron as 
Secretary of War, 289; his efficiency, 
289, 290; interview with the President, 
2 93. 294; at gathering of officials to dis- 
cuss news of Monitor and Merrimac, 296; 
conveys President's reply to McClellan's 
plan of campaign, 298 ; indignation at 
McClellan, 311; draws up and signs 
memorandum of protest against continu- 
ing McClellan in command, 311; instruc- 
tion about slaves, 349 ; faith in Hooker, 
370; anxiety for Lincoln during Early's 
raid, 403; order regulating raising of 
colored troops, 435 ; orders suppression 
of two New York newspapers and arrest 
of their editors, 453, 454; agrees with 
President against making proffers of 
peace to Davis, 463 ; relations with Mont- 
gomery Blair, 488; sends Halleck's letter 
to President, 488 ; shows Lincoln Grant's 
despatch transmitting Lee's overtures, 503; 
disapproves Sherman's agreement with 
Johnston, 523 ; at Lincoln's death-bed, 540 

Star of the West, merchant vessel, un- 
successful attempt to reinforce Fort Sum- 
ter, 178 

Steele, Frederick, brevet major-general 
United States army, marches from Helena 



to Little Rock, Arkansas, 427 ; assists re- 
construction in Arkansas, 427 

Stephens, Alexander H., member of 
Congress, Confederate Vice-President, 
correspondence with Lincoln, 165, 166; 
elected Vice-President Confederate States 
of America, 179; "corner-stone" theory, 
179 ; signs military league, 197 ; appointed 
peace commissioner, 482 ; at Hampton 
Roads conference, 482-485 

Stevens, Thaddeus, member of Congress, 
criticism of joint resolution offering com- 
pensated emancipation, 325 

St. Lawrence, the, in fight between 
Monitor and Merrimac, 280 

Stone, Charles P., brigadier-general 
United States Volunteers, report about 
danger to Lincoln in Baltimore, 172, 173 

Stone, Dan, member of Illinois legislature, 
protest with Lincoln against resolutions 
on slavery, 47 

Stone, Dr. Robert K., at Lincoln's death- 
bed, 539, 540 

Stringham, Silas H. rear-admiral United 
States navy, commands Hatteras expe- 
dition, 245 

Stuart, John T., major Illinois Volunteers, 
member of Congress, reenlists as private 
in Black Hawk War, 33 ; elected to Illi- 
nois, legislature in 1832, 34 ; reelected in 
'834. 43! encourages Lincoln to study 
law, 44 ; at Springfield, Illinois, 52; 
elected to Congress, 69, 70 

Surratt, John H., in conspiracy to assas- 
sinate Lincoln, 534 ; deposits arms in 
tavern at Surrattsville, 536; escape to 
Canada, subsequent capture and trial, 544 

Surratt, Mrs. Mary E., in conspiracy to 
assassinate Lincoln, 534 ; visits tavern at 
Surrattsville, 536; fate of, 541, 542, 544 

Swaney, teacher of President Lincoln, 12 

Swett, Leonard, favors Holt for Vice- 
President, 448 

Taney, Roger B., chief justice of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, opin- 
ion in Dred Scott case, 109; action in 
Merryman case, 199, 200; death of, 490 

Taylor, E. D., elected to Illinois legisla- 
ture in 1832, 34 

Taylor, Richard, Confederate lieutenant- 
general, surrenders to Canby, 525, 527 

Taylor, Zachary, twelfth President of the 
United States, nominated for President, 
80, 81 ; elected President, 87 

Tennessee, the, Confederate ram, in bat- 
tle of Mobile Bay, 525 

Tennessee, State of, joins Confederacy, 
200, 204 ; military governor appointed for, 
419; secession usurpation in, 420; delay 
of reconstruction in, 428; organization of 
State government and abolishment of sla- 
very, 429 ; public opinion in, regarding 
slavery, 473 ; ratifies Thirteenth Amend- 
ment, 475 

Terry, Alfred H., brevet major-general 
United States army, communicates with 
Sherman, 416 



INDEX 



577 



Texas, State of, ratifies Thirteenth Amend- 
ment, 475 

Thatcher, Henry K., rear-admiral United 
States navy, receives surrender of Far- 
rand, 525 

Thirteenth Amendment, joint resolu- 
tion proposing, 471-475; ratification of, 

Thomas, George H., major-general 
United States army, ordered to oppose 
Zollicoffer, 254; victory over Zollicoffer, 
265 ; at battle of Chickamauga, 387 ; suc- 
ceeds Rosecrans at Chattanooga, 3S9; in 
battle of Chattanooga, 390, 391 ; sent by 
Sherman to defend Tennessee, 409; 
Franklin and Nashville, 410; threatens 
Confederate communications from Ten- 
nessee, 502 

Thompson, Jacob, member of Congress, 
Secretary of the Interior, agent of Con- 
federate government in Canada, 361 ; his 
visionary plans, 361, 362 ; account at 
Montreal Bank, 544 

Thompson, Samuel, colonel Illinois Vol- 
unteers, commands regiment in Black 
Hawk War, 32 

Tod, David, minister to Brazil, governor 
of Ohio, declines nomination for Secretary 
of the Treasury, 457 

Todd, Mary, see Lincoln, Mary Todd 

Totten, Joseph G., brevet major-general 
United States army, at gathering of offi- 
cials to discuss news of fight of Monitor 
and Merrimac, 296 

Treat, Samuel H., United States district 
judge, at Springfield, Illinois, 52 

Trent Brothers, buy store of Lincoln and 
Berry, 36 

Trent, the, British mail-steamer, overhauled 
by the San Jacinto, 246 

Trumbull, Lyman, member of Congress, 
United States senator, at Springfield, 
Illinois, 52; elected to United States 
Senate, 1855, 100 

Turnham, David, lends Lincoln "Re- 
vised Statutes of Indiana," 14 

Usher, John P., Secretary of the Trea- 
sury, resigns from cabinet, 492 

Vallandigham, Clement L., member of 
Congress, interview with John Brown, 
134; arrest and banishment of, 358 ; head 
01 Knights of Golden Circle, etc., 360, 
361 ; at Democratic national convention, 
467,468 

Van Bergen, sues Lincoln for debt, 36, 41 

Vandalia, Illinois, removal of State capital 
from, to Springfield, 45, 52 

Van Dorn, Earl, Confederate major- 
»( rteral, defeat at Pea Ridge, 271 

Varuna, the, sunk in expedition against 
New Orleans, 285 

Vicksburg, Mississippi, fortifications of, 
287; surrender of, July 4, 1863, 376, 383; 
situation of 381 ; operations against, 381- 

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ire- 



land, proclamation of neutrality, 211 ; 

kindly feelings toward United States, 247 
Vienna Station, ambush at, 214 
Virginia, State of, passes ordinance of 

secession, 194 ; in the Confederacy, 204 ; 

ratifies Thirteenth Amendment, 475 

Wade, Benjamin F., United States sena- 
tor, signs Wade-Davis manifesto, 456 

Walker, Leroy Pope, Confederate Sec- 
retary of War and brigadier-general, 
speech at Montgomery, 197 

Walker, Robert J., United States sena- 
tor, Secretary of the Treasury, appointed 
governor of Kansas, 114 ; letter to Bu- 
chanan, 114, 115; resigns, 117 

Warren, Gouverneur K., brevet major- 
general United States army, attacked by 
Lee, 507 

Washburne, Elihu B., member of Con- 
gress, minister to France, meets Lincoln 
at railway station in Washington, 174 

Washington City, cutoff from the North, 
194-197 ; communication restored, 197 ; 
fortifications of, 208, 209 ; threatened by 
Early, 403 ; grand review of Union army 
>n. 527-529 

Washington, George, first President of 
the United States, rank of lieutenant- 
general, 393 ; size of his armies compared 
with Lee's, 524 ; his place in United 
States history, 555 

Weitzel, Godfrey, brevet major-general 
United Slates army, receives surrender 
of Richmond, 510; sets about work of 
relief, 516 

Welles, Gideon, Secretary of the Navy, 
appointed Secretary of the Navy, 182; 
approves course of Captain Wilkes, 246; 
at gathering of officials to discuss news of 
fight between Monitor and Merrimac, 
296; refuses to sign cabinet protest, 311, 
312 ; Lincoln tells him of coming emanci- 
pation proclamation, 332 

West Virginia, State of, formation of, 200, 
201 ; true to the Union, 204 ; effect on, of 
McCIellan's campaign, 225 ; admission 
to the Union, 418 ; slavery in throttled by 
ublic opinion, 473 

hig Party, first national convention of, 
28 ; nominates Henry Clay, 28 ; conven- 
tion of 1S60, 143, 144 

White, Albert S., member of Congress, 
United States senator, judge of District 
Court of Indiana, reports bill to aid eman- 
cipation in Delaware.Maryland, Virginia, 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 
126 . . 

Whitesides, Samuel, general Illinois 
Volunteers, reenlists as private in Black 
Hawk War, 33 

Wide Awakes, origin and campaign 
work of, 155, 1^6 

Wilderness, Virginia, battle of, May 5, 
6, 1S64, 398 

Wilkes, Charles, rear-admiral United 
States navy, capture of the Trent, 246- 
249 



P 

Wl 



578 



INDEX 



Wilmington, North Carolina, occupation 
of, February 22, 1865, 525 

Wilson, James H., brevet major-general 
United States army, cavalry raid, and 
defeat of Forrest, 524, 525 

Wilson's Creek, Missouri, battle of, Au- 
gust 10, 1861, 235 

Wise, Henry A., minister to Brazil; 
governor of Virginia, Confederate briga- 
dier-general, desires Douglas's reelection 
to United States Senate, 126; interview 
with John Brown, 134 

Worden, John L., rear-admiral United 
States navy, commands the Monitor, 282 

Wright, Horatio G., brevet major-gen- 
eral United States army, sent to Wash- 
ington, 403 ; in recapture of Fort Sted- 



man, 505, 506 ; in assault at Petersburg, 
508, 309 

Yates, Richard, member of Congress, 
governor of Illinois, United States sena- 
tor, Lincoln advocates his reelection, 96; 
commissions Grant, 265 ; appoints J. F. 
Jaquess colonel of volunteer regiment, 
461 

Yorktown, Virginia, siege of, April 5 to 
May 3, 1862, 301 

Zollicoffer, Felix K., member of Con- 
gress, Confederate brigadier-general, in 
eastern Kentucky, 254; defeated by 
Thomas, 265 



